Introduction
Sometimes that money you put over the counter at the cinema isn't enough for the big studios. They also need product placement in order to make the film a financial success, and when done right it can help make the film feel a little more real.
But most of the time it just feels like one big advert.
Some product placements really takes you out of the action as the protagonist spends 30 seconds twiddling the new smartphone around in their fingers before they make the phone call that saves the day.
We've collected some of the worst phone placements in cinema history - all of them are bad, but some are much worse than others.
Transformers - N93i
There are many issues with Michael Bay's original Transformers movie – the least of which is the product placement, but it's still quite gratuitous. Anything in the Transformers movie can be turned into an Autobot or a Decepticon and Bay proves it by putting the new Nokia N93i into a cuboid and zapping it full of energy.
When it's placed in the cube it's even in the unique upright position showing it can be used as a camera as well. This way the audience get to see what phone it is and really understand the narrative purpose of it being a Nokia. If only all our mobile phones could turn into robots.
Skyfall - Sony Xperia T
Bond movies are the worst for product placement; they've been built on it ever since Sean Connery's Bond sat next to a can of Red Stripe in 1964's Dr No. The most recent Bond film, Skyfall, features a phone again, but it isn't as obvious as some other films.
The worst part of this is the backstory, revealed in leaked Sony emails. It proved Daniel Craig was paid £3.3 million to hold the Sony Xperia T in the latest film even though neither the actor or Sam Mendes though the phone was one that James Bond would use.
The Amazing Spider-Man - Everything
Did you know that Sony Pictures Entertainment produced the Amazing Spider-Man films? You might have thought something was up - not because of any spider senses you could have picked up from a radioactive spider bite - but because the films are packed to the (cobwebbed-filled) rafters with Sony products.
Not only does Spider-man use a Sony Vaio laptop when he's not saving the day, the exploits of super villains are watched on Sony Xperia tablets, while news reports beam from old Sony CRT TVs.
Perhaps the most blatant example of product placement in the films is that everyone in New York appears to have a Sony Xperia smartphone of some sort. Spider-Man even saves someone who listening to music on their Sony handset. Despite being a film about superheroes, this is by far the most unrealistic aspect.
Tomorrow Never Dies - Sony Ericsson JB988
In nobody's favourite James Bond film, the 1997 Pierce Brosnan-starring Tomorrow Never Dies, 007 had a rather unsexy Sony Ericsson handset that came with a few neat tricks.
Packed with more tools than a giant Swiss Army Knife, it allowed Bond to scan fingerprints and remotely control a BMW 750iL car. He could also use it to electrocute henchmen with 20,000 volts, a feature that Sony surprisingly left out of any of its real-world phones.
Sony Ericsson actually built 12 phones for the film, four of which were used on screen, and each one was supplied with a letter of authenticity from Ericsson.
The Dark Knight - Nokia 5800 XpressMusic
It's hard to believe that when the second of Christopher Nolan's Batman films emerged, we'd only had one iPhone, and Nokia was yet to actually create a proper touchscreen phone.
What's harder to believe is that Nokia actually put its first effort at taking on the iPhone (the 'Tube', later unveiled as the 5800 XpressMusic) in the Dark Knight, yet didn't tell anybody about it.
Only a few hardcore phone journalists noticed this secret Nokia product in the film (the bit where Morgan Freeman is asked to leave his phone at the desk) – making it all the more curious why Nokia took the risk of putting such a high-profile, unreleased phone in a film… only to stay silent about it.
The Matrix - Samsung SPH-N270
Phone-movie tie-ins don't get more iconic than 1999's original Matrix film and Nokia's 8110 handset. That phone was imbued with the now-synonymous snap opening mechanism specifically for the film, and cult status was born.
Which makes the decision to partner with Samsung and make this monstrosity all the more curious. Instead of understated geek-chic, the Samsung SPH-N270 was designed specifically for the film and seemed to be hewn out of the offspring of a rock and a box of wires.
The snap mechanism was clearly a deal breaker, but Samsung's take of the earpiece popping up made little sense. Given the movie was set only a few months after the original, why did Morpheus upgrade his entire team's phones?
Maybe it wasn't all fight scenes and exciting chases in the Matrix world. Maybe he was out shopping one day and popped into his local phone shop and was offered a terrific bundle deal. Maybe Samsung paid an extraordinary amount of money to make the promotional items for the film, defecating all over one of the best bits of the original.
Who knows, eh?
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