Product Suicide

Suicide Squad Product Placement

Product placement can act as a way for a film or an item in a film to bring the movie to life. Within the cinema realm directors and producers choose to incorporate name brand products to make the action enclosed in the movie more realistic. In the film Suicide Squad, a DC Comics brand, only three products were featured. Car products become especially important to the branding of a movie as well as character development; in Suicide Squad government agents drive completely blacked out Chevrolet Suburbans. These vehicles often seen accompany people of power who require protection. The Chevrolet brand might have sought a connection with the government in the film because of the reliability needed in government vehicles. The federal services of our country cannot be trusted to fight crime and catch criminals in a car without reliability as well as fuel efficient value. The current 2017 Chevrolet Suburban boasts “best-in-class highway fuel economy of 23 MPG” and a car where you “built to accommodate your family’s needs.” The needs of the family can translate into a conventional biological family, or the slightly different work family. The government workers act as a work family and connect to the Chevrolet in Suicide Squad by transporting government officials and agents

The second product, also endorsed by the government agencies in the movie. is Dasani Water. While Viola Davis explains to the prospective heads law enforcement the value of the Squad, Dasani waters litter the table along with a few cans of Coca-Cola. Dasani has a distinct taste of minerals and freshness. The director could have purposely paired his movie with Dasani because Davis pitched a fresh idea to others. This new idea had value, just like the members of the suicide squad. Dasani also boosts of using recycled good to make their bottles. This idea of recycled plants to make new bottles parallels how they are recycled villains into heroes. The third and final product seen throughout the film was a Samsung mobile device. Unlike the first two products mentioned, Samsung had connections with the actual Suicide Squad. Towards the end of the film the squad has finally found their place as heroes instead of villains forcefully posing as heroes. Once this transition in identity becomes apparent, the characters begin to connect with the Samsung product. This pairing could provide benefits to Samsung because it links goodness and nobility to their product. The heroes are shown texting, planning, and streaming video on the Samsung devices exhibiting the phone’s diversity of use. If the phone showed up earlier in the film in the hands of members of the Squad, the desired effect of nobility would have been tainted.

The decision of the director to leave out more products makes sense on two levels. The first comes in the setting of the film. Suicide Squad, takes places in the DC Extended Universe of a fictional city solely used for DC comic book characters. The presence of more products could have brought the audience out of the made-up universe and distorted the image the director wished to portray. The second logical reason for the lack of products comes in the main characters themselves. The members of the Suicide Squad engaged in varying degrees of criminal activity including murder, theft, and arson. To have a product associated with these characteristics could be harmful to the sales of products because of the association with crime. This reason could explain why two of the three products seen within the movie were pictured in association to government figures until the end when the Squad fully immerses themselves in helping the greater good.

Despite these seemingly logical decisions to exclude product placement from within the film, Suicide Squad receives a rating of two stars because of the overall lack of brand name items shown onscreen. The film would have received more stars if a variety of products made an appearance as well as had connections to a multitude of characters.