Korean cars getting big screen exposure
Skids is just one of a number of Korean-made cars that have appeared in movies made by Hollywood studios in recent years.
But it is definitely the most visible. The three-door hatchback plays a major role as one of the Autobots fighting alongside the humans in an epic battle to save the world from the destructive Decepticons.
When Michael Bay, the film’s director, visited Seoul to promote the first installment of the Transformers trilogy in 2007 he said he would consider including a Korean vehicle in the sequel. Enter Skids.
GM Daewoo also did the design for Skids’ twin brother Mudflap, aka the Chevrolet Trax, but the company has decided not to go through with the commercial release of that vehicle.
Before the Transformers movie came along, Korean cars had relatively small roles in films produced by Hollywood studios, and were often seen being crashed in action scenes.
But all of that is changing as Korean automakers begin to aggressively seek product placement contracts with Hollywood studios to raise their profiles and win bigger sales.
In “Disturbia” (2007), a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window,” the protagonist’s neighbor is seen driving around in a Hyundai NF Sonata. In the sci-fi flick “War of the Worlds” (2005) a Hyundai Sonata is incinerated by a laser beam shot by an alien vessel. In “The Bourne Supremacy” (2002) a Hyundai EF Sonata is on screen for 10 minutes in the car chase that opens the movie.
But sometimes Korean cars still provide the fodder for jokes. In “Barbershop” (2002), about a small barbershop in Chicago, Ice Cube, who plays a barber, jokes that Rodney King - whose brutal beating by Los Angeles police officers, and the subsequent trial that acquitted the officers, sparked the LA riots in 1992 - should have been beaten up for driving a Hyundai.
Korean cars may not have had a strong presence in Hollywood movies in the past, but that seems to be changing and we may soon be seeing other Korean cars lit up by the lights of Hollywood.
By Lee Ho-jeong
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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