Cash-grabs and corporate synergy: The 10 most shameless movies of all time
At the end of the day, the aim of the cinema industry is to make as much money as humanly possible, and it’s pointless trying to pretend otherwise.
The biggest hits generate the revenue that trickles down to smaller projects hailing from high-profile and aspiring auteurs, an ecosystem that’s been in place for decades no matter how critical Martin Scorsese continues to be of IP-driven undertakings and franchise fare taking precedence.
Product placement, corporate synergy, and outside tie-ins have all become increasingly important – and lucrative – cogs in the Hollywood machine, but the best and brightest filmmakers have developed a means of organically folding it into the story at the insistence of their overlords in the boardroom.
When that doesn’t happen, the end result is a cloyingly manufactured feature that can’t hide the fact all it wants you to do is either be aware of or buy something else, a cardinal sin committed by all ten of these shameless flicks that all carried an agenda they didn’t bother trying to hide.
The 10 most shameless movies:
10. The Super Mario Bros Movie (Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, 2023)
Not to sound too cynical, but it’s not a coincidence Nintendo suddenly became a lot less reluctant to license out its most high-profile properties to Hollywood right around the time the company’s key characters were being integrated into theme parks around the world.
Following Bob Hoskins’ dismal attempt, Nintendo was smart enough not to hand its IP over to anyone who came knocking on the door. However, it was announced less than a year after construction began on the various global iterations of Super Nintendo World that The Super Mario Bros. Movie was a go, which is nothing if not curious timing.
Naturally, it raced to over $1.3 billion at the box office and has a sequel in development despite being nothing more than serviceable family fare, with the film’s entire existence hinging on Nintendo’s desire to maximise profits across a number of fronts.
9. Power Rangers (Dean Israelite, 2017)
With nostalgia for the 1990s continuing to rise and serving as the crux for a concerning number of people’s entire personalities, it was inevitable the TV series that caused an entire generation to start roundhouse kicking their friends in the face was in line for a comeback, but that was only part of what drove Power Rangers.
There were the all-important toy sales to consider, with parent company Saban’s earnings gradually starting to decline on that front, which necessitated the mighty morphing teens to be packaged and sold to a new audience. Ironically, Power Rangers made more on merchandise than it did from cinemas, which helped kill studio Lionsgate’s ridiculously confident plans for a six-film franchise.
That’s without even mentioning the constant product placement, either, with Krispy Kreme serving as a pivotal location for the climactic showdown, replete with gratuitous shots of the tasty treats so blatant in attempting to shill their wares that Michael Bay himself would probably blush.
8. Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man (Simon Wincer, 1991)
Motorcycles and cigarettes aren’t regularly used to market action comedies to the average cinemagoer, with Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man turning out to be such a disaster that Mickey Rourke decided he’d rather be punched in the face for a living than continue acting.
Beyond Rourke and Don Johnson’s title characters, the rest of the ensemble boast such monikers as Virginia Slim, Jack Daniels, and Jose Cuervo, and it stands to reason the companies associated with those products had to give their blessing and may well have benefitted had the movie not crashed and burned.
Painting itself as a serious film full of people named after booze and cig brands, Rourke shared on Alec Baldwin’s Here’s the Thing podcast that there was only one reason he agreed to sign on. “This piece of shit fell in my plate and they offered me a boatload of money,” he said. “And like a whore I took the $4 million or whatever it was. And I remember doing this film and hating myself every day.” On the plus side, at least he wasn’t alone.
7. Ghostbusters: Afterlife (Jason Reitman, 2021)
Following the vitriolic response to Paul Feig’s female-led reboot, Ghostbusters went back to the drawing board, kept it in the family, and leaned so heavily into nostalgia, name recognition, and awareness that Afterlife doesn’t have a sentient or original thought in its own body.
Sony founded the Ghost Corps production banner specifically for mining Ghostbusters content across all mediums, and so far, the entirety of the outfit’s filmography stretches to Feig’s Ghostbusters, Afterlife, and Frozen Empire. Things haven’t gone to plan, then, which might have a lot to do with the startling lack of interest in anything that isn’t jogging the memories of the fandom.
Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, and Annie Potts return for gratuitous cameos, Sigourney Weaver was relegated to the mid-credits, the CGI ghost of Harold Ramis was questionably deployed, and even the villains from 1984 were repurposed for a gratuitous exercise in rose-tinted glasses run amok.
6. The Hobbit trilogy (Peter Jackson, 2011-2013)
Adapting a slim 300-word novel into almost nine hours of cinema – more than that when counting the extended editions – was always going to stretch The Hobbit to breaking point, but that decision wasn’t even made until well over a year into production.
When Guillermo del Toro dropped out of the director’s chair, Peter Jackson was literally the only person qualified to replace him, and it never once felt as if he was anywhere near as invested as he was the first time around. Announced as two films, The Hobbit was stretched out to a trilogy for no other reason than earning as much money as possible.
The Lord of the Rings is a monumental achievement in the medium, one that’s going to endure for generations to come as the pinnacle of commercially successful, awards-laden, and enthralling storytelling on an epic scale. The studio knew this, which is the only reason The Hobbit exists.
5. The Wizard (Todd Holland, 1989)
In the broadest of strokes, story-wise, The Wizard is pretty much a facsimile of Tom Cruise‘s Rain Main for the Nintendo boom, with an older brother breaking his younger sibling out of a psychiatric facility so that he can weaponize his preternatural talents for playing video games to secure a substantial cash prize.
As a work of cinema, though, it’s basically a 100-minute advertisement on the merits of Nintendo. The movie that introduced Super Mario Bros 3 to the United States and espoused the virtues of the soon-to-be flop Power Glove accessory to the masses, the company were even granted approval over the screenplay.
The Wizard was a modest box office success, but it’s debatable if the film even had the tiniest impact on Nintendo’s annual revenue, which is quite evidently the main driving force behind the entire project since the first moment of conception.
4. The Internship (Shawn Levy, 2013)
This may come as a shock, but Google was thrilled with how it was depicted in blah comedy The Internship, which would have felt like even more of an infomercial were it to allow the production to shoot at its headquarters, but the tech monolith’s graciousness didn’t quite extend that far.
Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn battled to win a prestigious job at Google. The products of Google stretch as far as the eye can see, and even the title font replicates the Google logo. As far as trying to paint itself as among the least nefarious corporations on the planet, subsuming a studio comedy was a smart way to go about it.
Google was adamant that no money was exchanged with the filmmakers or 20th Century Fox, but cash hardly needed to trade hands given the way the company was given the full-blown hagiography treatment by The Internship, with the brand being shown in a disconcertingly favourable light from beginning to end.
3. Mac and Me (Stewart Raffill, 1988)
Steven Spielberg‘s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial became the highest-grossing film in history when it was released, and people really love eating McDonald’s. Those two facts may not be connected at first glance, but the creators of Mac and Me obviously had different ideas.
There’s being subtle about product placement, and then there’s having the titular alien hail from the planet of Quartus Poundus, not to mention an elaborate dance number boasting a cameo appearance from Ronald McDonald, who was rewarded with a Golden Raspberry Award for ‘Worst New Star of the Year’ for his efforts.
Mac and Me was even partially funded by Golden State Foods, a distributor who shipped food nationwide to a number of vendors, including… yep, McDonald’s. It’s hailed as one of the worst movies ever made for a reason, but there’s something fascinating about just how brazen it is in its fast food obsession.
2. The Emoji Movie (Tony Leondis, 2017)
Not only shameless but misleading, The Emoji Movie ended up giving the spotlight to a number of apps that could be marketed and sold to its target demographic, conveniently overlooking the fact that emojis are entirely free from the perils of copyright infringement.
Candy Crush, Just Dance, Instagram, Dropbox, Facebook, Shazam, Twitter, WeChat, and YouTube were all present and accounted for, while it boggles the mind that co-writer director Tony Leondis devised the idea due to his deep-seated love of Toy Story. One is a classic, and the other is abominable trash, but trying to update the core concept for the smartphone age was about as unseemly as it gets.
Patrick Stewart voicing the living embodiment of a piece of shit isn’t even one of the ten most egregious sins committed by The Emoji Movie, which maddeningly recouped its budget four times over and then some from cinemas, and no doubt sparked a surge in app downloads, too.
1. Space Jam: A New Legacy (Malcolm D. Lee, 2021)
Good things often come to those who wait, but not to anyone who’d spent 25 years biding their time for a Space Jam sequel, only to be gifted with a monstrous eyesore that wanted everybody to know about the wealth of content Warner Bros has at its disposal.
The beloved original was a straightforward tale of cartoon heroes teaming up with a human superstar to win the game of a lifetime against their enemies, but A New Legacy was beholden to the fact HBO Max had recently launched and needed to inform prospective customers of the wide array of titles it had on offer.
A $150 million advert for Warner Bros packed with a cavalcade of references to movies that flew over the head of its target audiences – Pennywise the Clown murders children, lest it be forgotten – it’s the single most shameless motion picture that’s ever been made, to the point taking A New Legacy‘s crown will take some doing.