Consumer product movies have much in store for our entertainment

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When I first watched David Fincher’s 2010 film, The Social Network, its story about the early beginnings of Facebook was a strange premise to me, yet I still enjoyed it. From high ratings on Rotten Tomatoes to positive reviews on pop culture sites, consumer product movies are growing in popularity, and more are on the way. The genre is performing successfully because we love learning about our surreal history of consumerism.

There used to be a time when your favourite brands would only appear as product placements in movies. Now, they have their own films in theatres and streaming platforms with stories ranging from Nike shoes in Ben Affleck’s Air on Amazon Prime Video to fantasy games in Chris Pine’s Dungeons & Dragons movie. 

Even Canada joined this trend when Toronto director Matt Johnson released his Blackberry movie about the titular Canadian smartphone on May 12. His project not only earned a critics score of 98 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes, but was also recommended by entertainment sites like Deadline after its debut at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Whether it’s Air or Blackberry, people enjoyed these dramas because they are not so much about the history of consumerism, but exciting underdog stories. They’re written expertly as fun movies with believable stakes as you see real-life characters risk it all to unexpectedly succeed in the competitive world of business and entrepreneurship. Audiences feel enthralled following these people on screen, knowing the product they made will be a success. 

Another reason we love product movies for their surreal consumerism history is because this past is what defines our current lifestyles as consumers. However, pop culture site Vox says the reason consumer product movies are doing so well is because it’s more financially practical for Hollywood to invest money in these stories. Studios prefer to make productions with safer and less riskier ideas than to spend millions of dollars on concepts that could become potential failures.

While consumer product movies are not as risky as big budget blockbusters, it doesn’t change the fact there’s still a magnetic energy to these films. Screenrant covered this subject in a feature piece about comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s plan to release a Pop-Tarts movie on Netflix, where Screenrant writer Spencer Bollettieri explained how Seinfeld has proven that the best stories begin with “deceptively mundane subjects such as what’s for breakfast.

We’re drawn to learn more about consumerism from items we took for granted or found to be trivial in normal life. In discovering more about the history of what has been made and will later be bought by consumers like us, we study more about ourselves. Self-exploration through a product’s past has become intriguing for anybody willing to buy a ticket or hit play.

Whether they’re about food, technology, or shoes, consumer product movies are a popular trend for their surreal consumerist history. Regardless of their philosophical themes or the fact that they’re just enjoyable, these films are here to stay.