Gaybees

This is the real answer. If your business relies of billions in VC money every year to stay afloat, then you don’t have a sustainable business and probably shouldn’t keep doing what you’re doing. Last time I checked Uber eats has a negative margin on every order…

I think you’re focusing too much on the ROI and and not the distinction between projected ROI and a guaranteed one. They can expect to make a return, but the cannot do so with any degree of certainty. Whereas with a sponsored segment, that is guaranteed money before the movie even opens.

And you’re correct, good movies have been made under capitalism. Good movies are also made with sponsored segments. I’m arguing that they’re good despite the pressures of capitalism, not because of it.

I mean look at Elemental, huge, expensive production, one of the biggest animation houses in America with a history of incredible and influential work, huge media and ad campaigns and yet… it was a flop (at least domestically). I’m sure they expected to make a lot more money than they did.

The true evil is often banal.

I guess what I’m saying is I don’t see either top gun or Barbie movie as “partial propaganda”, I see them as entirely propaganda. So, at least for me, having some additional propaganda for Samsung phones or car brands doesn’t seem out of place or jarring for me.

It’s honestly more jarring for me to see how the military is portrayed compared to what it’s actually like.

It might not be as obvious as literally winking into the camera, but Top Gun had substantial monetary investment from the U.S. military, and they definitely tried to make being in the military look cool and fun and attractive.

They definitely don’t show what it’s really like to be a service member, and that’s for good reason.

I think the issue you have is with capitalism. Artists don’t know with any level of certainty if their movie, music video etc will have any substantial return on their investment. So if you’re a studio sinking millions of dollars into something, you want to know that you’re gonna make at least some of that back, and negotiating ahead of time for a sponsored segment can help guarantee at least a small return. This is made much worse by the downturn of the movie industry in America with record low movie tickets being sold. It’s just becoming less and less feasible to make money from movies (and music/music videos for that matter but they’re a much different type of media) these days.

If people were able to make art for arts sake, not have to worry about people paying for it, being able to pay rent etc. then I think this would disappear almost entirely.

Wow this is huge. Let’s hope it holds up to years and years of legal threats from lobbyists