• Light/Dark
  • Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
  • We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.

Rian Johnson: Apple Won’t Let Movie Villains Use iPhones On Camera

Schlorgan

Schlorgan

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
14,932
Salt Lake City, Utah
www.engadget.com

Rian Johnson: Apple won’t let movie villains use iPhones on camera

Product placement in Hollywood has existed almost since the advent of movies themselves, so by now we're all fairly immune to seeing glaringly obvious logos and brands on the big screen. And while no company wants to be associated with negative connotations, it seems that one tech giant is...
www.engadget.com www.engadget.com

According to Knives Out and Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson, Apple has a strict stipulation in its product placement contracts that its devices cannot be used by any villainous characters. In a Knives Out scene dissection for Vanity Fair, Johnson said: "Apple, they let you use iPhones in movies but, and this is very pivotal if you're ever watching a mystery movie, bad guys cannot have iPhones on camera." He followed this up with, "Every single filmmaker who has a bad guy in their movie that's supposed to be a secret wants to murder me right now."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
 
DMczaf

DMczaf

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,279
Las Vegas, NV
He followed this up with, "Every single filmmaker who has a bad guy in their movie that's supposed to be a secret wants to murder me right now."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

giphy.gif
 

Deleted member 15737

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,432
Schlorgan said:
www.engadget.com

Rian Johnson: Apple won’t let movie villains use iPhones on camera

Product placement in Hollywood has existed almost since the advent of movies themselves, so by now we're all fairly immune to seeing glaringly obvious logos and brands on the big screen. And while no company wants to be associated with negative connotations, it seems that one tech giant is...
www.engadget.com www.engadget.com
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Could also provide some interesting takes on what apple considers to be good or bad.

'Let's find the worst good guy from the last several years who uses an iphone!'
 
kami_sama

kami_sama

Member
Oct 26, 2017
7,045
Have everyone use Android.
Now nobody will know who's the villain and apple gets nothing.
 
Sabretooth

Sabretooth

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,098
India
He followed this up with, "Every single filmmaker who has a bad guy in their movie that's supposed to be a secret wants to murder me right now."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This is the plot of Knives Out 2, a whoddunnit filmmaker is murdered by another filmmaker, we just don't know which one.
 
sangreal

sangreal

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
10,890
...if you have a product placement contract. Don't think they can stop anyone otherwise
 
Fliesen

Fliesen

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,281
22 minute video of Johnson analyzing the craftsmanship of moviemaking.
-> Single little 5 second "lol Apple" factoid to get those clicks :P


Anywho - i wonder about how that rule is 'written', like, what constitues a villain? By all intents and purposes, the whole Thrombey family is a bunch of bad people. I'm pretty sure the alt right troll kid even uses an iPhone.
 
Tregard

Tregard

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,221
Interested if this applies to television too, lots of people in UK soaps use iPhones and their moral compasses are always shifting.
 
BossAttack

BossAttack

Member
Oct 27, 2017
43,195
Fliesen said:
22 minute video of Johnson analyzing the craftsmanship of moviemaking.
-> Single little 5 second "lol Apple" factoid to get those clicks :P


Anywho - i wonder about how that rule is 'written', like, what constitues a villain? By all intents and purposes, the whole Thrombey family is a bunch of bad people. I'm pretty sure the alt right troll kid even uses an iPhone.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Typically the person who murdered the victim of the murder mystery is the villain.
 
Falcon511

Falcon511

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,172
Weird. I was watching You on Netflix and the main character is using an iPhone in the second season. In the first season everyone was using some Android Phone. Like a galaxy s7. The main charactere certainly isnt a hero by any stretch. Maybe this just goes for big films and not TV shows.
 
Fliesen

Fliesen

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,281
BossAttack said:
Typically the person who murdered the victim of the murder mystery is the villain.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I understand this to be the case in Knives Out, but there's a lot of films that do not have an 'explicit' villain in the 'murderer' kind of sense, but in the - you know - moral kind of way.

Like, would Walter White be "allowed" to have an iPhone?

I'm just super sceptical about all these clickbaity "Apple doesn't allow..." articles, even if the source is Rian Johnson. He might just be trolling the lot of us.

Remember when AppleTV+ content was supposedly mandated to be family friendly? Which turned out to be not true, at all.
Or like, just recently, the new 'Silicon Valley, but for the games industry' ("Mythic Quest") show on AppleTV+ even has a scene mocking the uselessness of Siri.
 
Last edited:
Fatoy

Fatoy

Member
Mar 13, 2019
7,270
CrankyJay said:
Simple, stop putting real products in movies then.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The real world is full of Apple and Samsung phones. If your film is set in some approximation of the real world, including Apple and Samsung phones will help ground the film at the same time as covering some of its production budget. It's fine.

There are some egregious examples of product placement, but phones aren't usually the culprits. It's normally lingering shots of laptops, or shots where a car pulls into focus so the badge occupies a huge part of the screen.
 
BDS

BDS

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
13,845
To be clear, this is just a product placement thing. You're free to have any character hold an iPhone, but Apple won't pay you for it.
 
SeroTyler

SeroTyler

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,188
This must be recent because House of Cards might as well have had an Apple logo watermark and that show certainly didn't follow this rule
 
Parthenios

Parthenios

The Fallen
Oct 28, 2017
13,635
yuoke said:
Immersion breaking, for any movie meant to be like irl at least. Having the avengers flying around nyc and seeing real landmarks and cities and stuff, but then they have a phone that is some fake brand is worse than product placement.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Phones regardless of brand are all the same featureless black slabs.

Unless you're doing some Michael Bay close up with the character going "I have to get a picture with my iPhone X available now!" then it doesn't matter.
 

BAD

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,569
USA
This is not unique to Apple and it only applies if they've paid for the product to be on film. Many companies also don't let their products be shown negatively at all (i.e. a Coca-Cola can won't usually be shown exploding on someone if Coke paid to be in the scene). They don't come after productions over this policy in cases where they didn't make an agreement.
 
liquidtmd

liquidtmd

Avenger
Oct 28, 2017
6,141
Shyamalan's next feature - third act:

*Detective tracking serial killer, Day*

'B...but it can't be Steve who butchered those women'

*Movie slow-mo montages all moments of Steve using an iPhone throughout the movie*

*Cuts to Steve in the present, music flares as he peels off an Apple sticker on his phone to reveal....HUAWEI*

*Detective reaches for gun and calls SWAT*
 
Kthulhu

Kthulhu

Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,670
Not really that surprising. I'd think most companies don't want their products tied to villains.
 
Zippedpinhead

Zippedpinhead

Fallen Guardian
Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,803
Falcon511 said:
Weird. I was watching You on Netflix and the main character is using an iPhone in the second season. In the first season everyone was using some Android Phone. Like a galaxy s7. The main charactere certainly isnt a hero by any stretch. Maybe this just goes for big films and not TV shows.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think this falls into the Walter White school of thought, both are arguably the main villains of their series, they just so happen to also be the protagonist that we are supposed to be rooting for. grey line that Apple probably allows.
 
wenis

wenis

Member
Oct 25, 2017
16,147
That was a fun video. I've watched a few of those break down videos and most directors only ever do like 10 minutes. Rian did 24 minutes and taught a small class on filmmaking. I appreciated that.
 
Stinkles

Stinkles

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
20,459
JAMES BOND: "We retrieved his cellphone, but Q and the boys in the lab haven't been able to crack the home screen encryption. Basically his fucking apps are all over the place. There's like, 118 screens for one thing and nothing is in order or folders or anything. And fuck knows what's up with the icons, they all appear to be Pony variants. It's going to take weeks just to find the Nuke Codes App, let alone understand the data. Mind you, he's got proper MAME working - we finally saw the end screen on Moon Patrol so that was neat."


Customize your home screen long enough to become the Villain.
 
Cranster

Cranster

Prophet of Truth
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
9,788
yuoke said:
Immersion breaking, for any movie meant to be like irl at least. Having the avengers flying around nyc and seeing real landmarks and cities and stuff, but then they have a phone that is some fake brand is worse than product placement.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yup, because the avengers and alien invasions happen in NYC on a regular basis in real life too /s.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.