This summer the Darknight Detective takes on his fiercest, most implacable foe yet, worse than Catwoman, more dangerous than the Penguin: a wave of 43 determined racecar drivers.
And you thought you’d never hear anyone say the words “worse than Catwoman” ever again.
In the latest publicity stunt by NASCAR and Warner Brothers, the June 19 NASCAR Nextel Cup race at Michigan International Speedway will be the “Batman Begins 400,” in honor of the upcoming new Batman movie named, of course, “Begins 400.” The movie’s Batmobile — which is supposed to be a menacing assault vehicle but comes off as a really big RC car — will be on hand to do a lap, and Mark Martin’s No. 6 Ford Taurus will be sporting a nifty Bat signal on the hood. I’m not quite getting whatever point this is supposed to make, other than “please go see the movie, please please please.”
This is because Hollywood understands that no one ever decides to see a movie because of the writing, the director, or the stars. No, we need spectacle and blatant pandering directed right at our frontal lobes every second of our waking lives if we are to lift our butts away from our DVRs and pull our heads out of our iPods. The little Burger King toys just aren’t cutting it anymore.
Posters, action figures, a novelization? That’s nothing, Super Bowl commercials get those now. If you don’t have a movie tie-in Xbox game, your own Visa card, and an abruptly renamed municipal stadium your movie will immediately get tagged as an art film and sent off to win an award at Sundance, clear $8 million domestically and die a miserable death in Blockbuster only to resurface occasionally as the answer in Trivial Pursuit that no one ever gets.
In the not-too-distant future — say, June — everything you buy, from groceries to furniture to replacement kidneys, will sport the name of a blockbuster movie on it somewhere.
The evil empire of movie marketing is, of course, Star Wars. LucasArts knows instinctively that fans want to own their own body weight in action figures, drink Darth Dew Slurpees and eat Star Wars Cheetos (in Yoda Green or Darth Vader black) or M&Ms (in milk chocolate “Jedi” or dark chocolate “M-Pire” forms) as they gulp Yoda cereal out of their R2D2 bowl with their light-up “Saber Spoons” whenever they’re not talking on their Cingular Star Wars phones while slashing on their Star Wars skateboards on the way to stand in line for the actual movie, which seems almost incidental by this point. It’s no coincidence that gas prices skyrocketed just as the “Revenge of the Sith” marketing got into gear; the world’s supply of plastic was suddenly drained.
(Although I do like “Darth Tater,” the Star Wars version of Mr. Potato Head. For some reason the notion of a brutal, genocidal monster in spud form appeals to me. You couldn’t get away with this kind of thing with saintly characters, which is why the “Passion of the Christ” Pez Dispenser never got past the design stage. Also, this means that Luke and Leia are, now and forever, Vader Tots.)
Frankly, were I the marketing director at Warner Brothers I’d be having second thoughts about the “Batman Begins 400.” What happens if the Batmobile can’t handle the frontstretch? What if there’s a wreck during the race and the Batman car pinwheels over the stands and roars flaming, sideways, into the newly redesigned AAA Motorsports Fan Plaza? Will that hurt the box office? Or help it?
Really, it would make a lot more sense if another driver, and here I think we’re all picturing Tony Stewart, was driving the Joker car right behind Martin. Wouldn’t that be cool? Just driving around the track is boring and far too simple for the Caped CrusaderTM to bother with. But give the Joker car some side-mounted machine guns and a flamethrower and suddenly it makes sense.
Shallow marketing ploy or not, if there’s a chance to see a Boston cream pie hit the windshield of the Batmobile at 180.911 m.p.h., I’ll be there.
Me and Darth Tater.