Ian Shoales
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com |
Spider-Man finally opened, to the great relief of those among us who were waiting
on tenterhooks, with baited breath, on pins and needles, for yet another movie
based on a comic book character we stopped paying attention to about twenty
years ago.
For reasons known only to the gods, it opened big, setting yet another box office record for an opening weekend, even though the reviews made it sound like the old web slinger may have been better off staying between covers under the protective plastic in your safe deposit box at the bank.
I guess if you're going to sell the original Spider-Man comic on eBay there needs to be something out in the real world to drive up its value. A Spider-Man movie is as good as anything else.
And movies today, of course, aren't really there to bring people into the theatres, though that's always nice. Movies today exist mainly to sell tee shirts, action figures, key rings, baseballs caps, and all the other bizarre gimcrack gewgaws that marketing types love to stuff into our Happy Meals.
Without Happy Meals, Hollywood would collapse like a house of cards. The house of cards has got to have Spider-Man's face on it, or nobody will even touch the deck.
Which makes me wonder: the promotional tie-ins for Spider-Man have been a little thin, in my opinion. There was one for a cellular phone. What would Spider-Man do with a cellular phone? And where would he put it? He doesn't have pockets.
And the fast food tie-in is with Hardee's and Carl's Jr. Not to put too fine a point on it, but if you were giving a black tie ball for fast food chains, Hardee's and Carl's Jr. would not be on the A-list, all right?
Dr. Pepper is the beverage of Spider-Man's choice, and Hershey's has some kind of deal--we all know how human arachnid mutants love their Almond Joys. Still, it all seems a little random, doesn't it? As if the big promotional guns had decided to shoulder their weapons and sit this one out?
Will things get worse when The Hulk hits the big screen? What if his only
promotional tie-ins are with a walkie talkie maker, Nehi orange soda, and Der
Wienerschnitzel? It depresses me just to think about it.
JWR contributor Ian Shoales is the author of, among others, Not Wet Yet: An Anthology of Commentary. Comment by clicking here.
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