Movie marketing can be a tricky thing. Studios certainly want to promote upcoming blockbusters to get as wide an audience as possible, but the risk is that you can tire people out on a movie before they’ve even seen it.
Marvel and Sony are walking that line very carefully with Spider-Man: Homecoming, dancing like a real spider on an actual strand of web. But by emphasizing character and setting, rather than spectacle, the ads come across more like comedy sketches than blatant advertising.
During the NBA Finals, we saw Tony Stark and Happy Hogan sending Peter Parker/Spider-Man on errands for Stark’s big party which Magic Johnson and Tim Duncan were attending. Though these were ads for the next Spider-Man movie, they also showed how the character was different. He’s a kid who looks up to Stark and gets bossed around by him.
That same idea applies to a new ad for Audi (Tony Stark’s preferred automobile brand going back to the first Iron Man), which reminds us that Peter Parker is a high school kid who has to take a driving test. This isn’t something we see Captain America and Thor doing. Making the ad/sketch even better is J.B. Smoove co-starring with Tom Holland as Parker’s drivers-ed instructor. Take a look:
https://youtu.be/GIXyL9vlYo4
Is the preferred standard for hands on the steering wheel now 9 and 3, instead of 10 and 2? Apparently, it is! That may be something we all learned today. (Or maybe you knew it already.)Lots of people are losing five points out there. Clever bit of writing there.
But how many of us follow that anyway, if you even have two hands on the wheel while driving? According to this Audi ad, hands are practically an unnecessary accessory when it comes to staying in a lane and parallel parking. No way Peter Parker got points for that. By the way, doesn’t the driving school program provide the car? The instructor needs that brake on the passenger side! Am I giving away how old I am? Or do superheroes get to drive a tricked-out Audi on loan from their genius billionaire philanthropist mentors?
Finally, we get some Spider-Man spectacle. Gotta show the costume and webs. But did Peter Parker pass his driving test? He changed lanes without using a turn signal. Do you wish J.B. Smoove had been your driving instructor? (I actually liked my instructor, Mr. Dimanis. Tough, fair, and compassionate.)
Good stuff here. But let’s see Spider-Man: Homecoming already. We still have two weeks until its July 7 release.
