Speed Racing to a new Madison Avenue no-man's land

By Steven Zeitchik

First, the refreshing news: For such a big summer tentpole, "Speed Racer" appears to have very little product placement.

Now the other news: Appearances can be deceiving.

The Wachowski Bros new film is all about the evils of corporate sponsorship in general and NASCAR -- we mean trippy-colored Faux-mula One -- in particular. Main character Speed (Emile Hirsch) rails against it. Pop Racer (John Goodman) has devoted his life to fighting it. Mustache-twirling villains spend their days reveling in it. The corporate sponsors are so venal they hire cars with nail-spewing tires to sabotage the races of the honest drivers. (Isn't there a governing body in this sport? Figure skating would be an improvement.)

Yet there's still placement for sponsors like Cheerios and Yokohama tires. Benign enough, right? But check this. The symbol adorning the protagonist's car, the Mach 5, looks unmistakably like the golden arches. Just a coincidence, we thought -- the filmmakers are probably just using the logo from the original cartoon. Not their fault. Plus McDonald's isn't involved in this, are they?

Oops.

The second point first -- McDonald's is actually a tie-in partner. As this Ad Age piece makes  clear, they're distributing the toys in Happy Meals and doing the requisite tie-ins for a family film.

Now to the first point, which is more insidious. The original logo of the Mach 5 is indeed an M (named for the Japanese version's main character, Mifune). But it  looks nothing like the symbol in the film. In the TV show the M looks much more angular, and its curves don't nearly slope the way the M does in this rendition, which looks so  much like the global McDonald's symbol that when you see it painted on the side of the car you might think McDonald's is the car's sponsor in the context of the film. It may not be brand placement. It's something much newer and trickier: brand suggestion.

Product placement can be good when it works -- one of the great pop classics, after all, "Back to the Future" -- started the  whole thing. But isn't it weird to hear how a sport (or an art, as racecar driving is labeled here) is being ruined by corporations in a film that then has unannounced brand placements for corporations? And then to pretend that it isn't brand placement? Go weird inconsistencies, go go go.

Comments

[Thomason]

Maybe none of the usual product placers (placeamenti?) wanted to have their products placed in a movie that presents so poorly. Is it not Speed racing on a flat?