The hype machines

In some respects, “I, Robot” -- a sci-fi thriller starring a futuristic Audi and, oh yes, Will Smith -- is fairly programmatic. In a future world, man’s artificial helpmates rebel against their organic overlords and tear up the town. Robots gone wild. They might have filmed the whole thing in Fort Lauderdale.

But in the annals of cinematic product placement -- and I’m afraid we have reached the point where there are such annals -- the film is a landmark.

Stockholders in the company U.S. Robotics may be surprised to find the company’s brand name splashed across the taut fannies of the film’s death-dealing robots. For a company best-known as the makers of harmless modems (or are they?), this is a decidedly mixed message to send to consumers. U.S. Robotics: We’re just waiting....

That a company would sign up with the film’s producers to co-brand the overthrow of the human race -- and for that company not to be Microsoft -- only goes to show how seductive product-placement opportunities are for companies trying to reach hazed-over and surfeited consumers. It also shows that, when it comes to product placement, “the future” is trecherous territory.

“I didn’t really want us to be in a futuristic movie at first,” says Tim Miksche, product-placement specialist for Audi AG, the luxury car division of VW Group that helped design and build Det. Del Spooner’s Audi RSQ sports coupe. “I didn’t know if Audi should be associated with that reality.” Mikshche was eventually persuaded by the company’s product-placement consultant, Ruben Igielko-Herrlich. “Ruben came back with the argument that the future lies at the heart of the Audi brand,” he says.

It’s also worth noting Audi execs had a look at the script, in which the proposed car was a 200-mile-per-hour robot-squashing star that dies heroically in a terrific crash from which the slightly upstaged Will Smith emerges intact.

What’s wrong with the future? By virtue of the conventions of science fiction, the future is dystopian -- a paradise of folly, where technological solutions to one set of woes give rise to others. Think of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Blade Runner,” “AI Artificial Intelligence” and “Minority Report.” In each of these movies, brand names lend verisimilitude to the imagined world, but the light it shines on them is not the idealizing nimbus of advertising. When the billboard blimp from “Blade Runner” drifts overhead, keening in Japanese opera and searing the night with the Coca-Cola logo, it doesn’t exactly make you run for the snack bar.

“Minority Report” (2002), directed by Steven Spielberg, was a watershed in what might be called future-product placement. Companies including American Express, Gap, Guinness, Nokia and Reebok paid as much as $25 million to have their brands and products featured in the movie, according to Variety. It’s an open question whether the fictional mileau of bobbing precogs and a police think-state created a lot of positive associations with these name brands.

“The funny thing about ‘Minority Report’ is how awful the future seems,” says Mary-Lou Galician, a “media literacy advocate” at Arizona State University. Galician, the head of media analysis and criticism in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication, argues that there is a “subtextual parody” in the movie’s rendering of futuristic advertising. In one instance, the main character, John Anderton (Tom Cruise), is hiding from the police. An interactive Guinness billboard calls him by name, revealing his position to his pursuers.

“It’s as if we have Spielberg as cultural critic,” Galician says, “betraying the paid placers at least to the part of the audience that is truly hip by drawing attention to the potential danger of the movie’s dark future in which corporate interests invade our privacy.”

Another subtlety of “Minority Report” is the fact that 50 years into the future, corporate consolidation has produced single industry monoliths -- there is one wireless equipment company, Nokia, and one car company, Lexus. “This was Spielberg’s vision of the future of corporations,” says Igielko-Herrlich, whose company, Propaganda Gem, also hammered out the reported $5-million product-placement deal between Spielberg’s DreamWorks and Lexus, a luxury division of Toyota.

According to the trade publication Automotive News, at least 40% of the estimated $1.5 billion spent on product placement and related promotions comes from the auto industry. “A lot of movies need automobiles,” Galician says, “and they are expensive, so it’s a great deal. It’s not just about the product in the movie but the incredible cross-promotional budget.”

“I, Robot” offered Audi an opportunity to project itself into the imagination of viewers -- in effect, to build one of those brand-burnishing concept cars seen at auto shows, only one several decades ahead of schedule. “The car in the movie, the RSQ, could be an Audi of the future,” says Martin Ertl, head of design management for Audi AG in Ingolstadt, Germany. “It incorporates well-known Audi design elements into what we think a sporty, mid-engine car should look like, Audi design extrapolated to 2035.”

Unlike the Lexus in “Minority Report,” which was designed by Hollywood conceptual artist Harald Belker with minimal input from Lexus, the “I, Robot” RSQ is the product of Audi’s design studios in Ingolstadt. Indeed, on some points the designers at Audi argued for and won changes in the vehicle from director Alex Proyas. “Alex had this strong idea for a special powertrain,” says Ertl, referring to the car’s spherical “wheels” that allow Det. Spooner’s car to spin while traveling in a straight line. Proyas also wanted the car to have a distinctive door-opening system -- the result being the car’s rear-hinged “butterfly” doors.

But Proyas also wanted the car to be a four-seater, a squad car -- not the most glamorous image. After reading the script, the Audi designers went back to the producers to argue for a two-seater. “We were desperate,” says Ertl. “We didn’t want to do a four-seater.”

“We didn’t see the Will Smith character in a four-seater,” adds Miksche, in a turn of phrase worthy of the best Tinseltown playmaker.

And so the Audi of the future is not some high-tech Crown Victoria but a sleek, muscular, ball-bearing wonder, vividly featured in Audi’s new $25-million cross-promotional campaign.

More important still, perhaps, is the idea that there will even be an Audi in the future. The appearance of familiar brands in futuristic movies conveys a special meaning, a special magic. It subtly suggests that the brand is somehow transcendent, permanent, eternal. One of the few recognizable features of New York in the sci-fi film “Fifth Element” is the odd ubiquity of McDonald’s fast food. “It says the product was, is and will always be,” Galitian says.

Nearly everyone can remember the first time they connected with this idea: during the opening sequence of “2001,” when the luminous Pan Am space plane arrows through the firmament.

Of course, Pan Am, the company, didn’t make it to calendar year 2001, and the Atari video game company proved far less durable than “Blade Runner,” the movie where the brand appears so prominently.

The product-intensive landscape of “I, Robot” offers some anachronisms-in-waiting: JVC, Converse and, strangest of all, Ovaltine, which seems to have repositioned itself as the green apple martini of the future.

Will there be a chocolatety breakfast beverage in your future? Perhaps. In the meantime, don’t take your eyes off that modem.

Dan Neil, The Times’ automotive critic, can be reached at dan.neil@latimes.com.