The product placements in this movie are so overt I'm wondering if they have some sort of symbolic or thematic meaning to them. The ghost of Hamlet's father disappearing into a Pepsi One machine? There has got to be some signifance to that or I have lost all respect for the filmmakers for not even attempting to blend it a little more. Has anyone heard or read anything about this?
Sorry if this question has already been poised.
*sigh* yeah, I've heard talk of this before. Apparently everyone was thinking he must have got paid to include them, but instead the director reckons in one interview that instead he paid for the privilege and they were deliberately included because of their social significance.
It really didn't have that much of an influence on my interpretation of the film, so I think this is a case where his intentions at simulating an intellectual film filled with symbolism were there and as such it was emphasized, but not effectively.
Edit: I found Almereyda's quote "We've heard cynical asides about lining our pockets ... We had to pay Blockbuster, and we had to pay Pepsi. We wanted a film that was cluttered with logos, to make a corollary for Hamlet's own troubles. Hamlet's having his voice submerged, inundated with advertising, gives strength to the phrase 'The rest is silence.' "
It seemed to me that the filmmaker was making a comment on consumer culture. He was making a modern adaptation, and it's pretty difficult to update to the current culture without including the presence of advertising in our daily lives. I mean, Denmark became the Denmark Corporation. If they're taking an Elizabethan text and making it more "relevant" to our current culture, it makes the most sense to saturate it in corporate influence.
I sincerely doubt that it was lazy product placement. It was too intentionally in-your-face.