Last weekend I went to see Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol and the product placement in the movie made itself evident rather quickly. Tom Cruise’s character uses an iPad as a gadget and the iPad gets plenty of focus in the scenes it’s involved in. Carrying around an iPad didn’t even seem practical in the situation, but there it is. Furthermore all of the characters in the movie use iPhones and Macbooks. You’d have to look pretty hard to see an electronic device without an Apple logo on it in the movie.

What’s interesting is if you go back and watch the original Mission Impossible, released in the 90’s, you can’t find any obvious product placement. All of the electronic devices are just there, they’re not particularly branded and if they are they don’t pop out of the screen at you and scream in your face like they do in Ghost Protocol.

I love Apple products myself, but the movie just seemed to take it overboard. If I’m out on some dangerous mission, I’m not going to be running around with an iPad, I’d be using a smaller, more efficient high tech device. But hey, I’m sure Apple paid good money to make you aware you can run around doing spy stuff with an iPad.

Product placement is here to stay, that’s for sure. Morgan Spurlock created a documentary funded entirely by product placement called The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. I haven’t watched it yet, but it seems like an interesting idea and it could possibly shed some light on just how product placement can effect a movie.

Thinks of this, if Apple is paying to get the iPad into Ghost Protocol, could they write in a scene where the iPad gets dropped and broken? Probably not. You have to keep it shiny and new, even with bullets flying.

So what’s your take on it all?

Subscribe in a reader