So, my wife and I sat down yesterday and did a movie exchange. This is where you both pick a movie that the other person really ought to see for some reason and then you watch them both so you can, you know, talk about them or other normal human stuff. 

In what was possibly the least-balanced exchange of movies EVER, she picked “The Martian” because it was an excellent movie that I hadn’t seen, and I made her suffer through three hours of the “Ultimate” edition of Batman vs. Superman because I’m an awful human being. Also I’d seen it in the theaters and was desperately curious to know whether the extended version has fixed any of its flaws. 

(In my opinion: yes. It takes it from about a 2/10 movie to about a 4/10. They couldn’t work miracles.)

That is not, however, the point. The point is, when you’re watching a movie for the second time and you know it’s going to be pain, your mind will seize on little details to distract you, and for some reason mine decided to pay attention to product placement. There is a LOT of it in this movie, right down to a conspicuous highlighting of the logo on the handgun that is being used to shoot Martha Wayne in the face.

What was weird, though, was how many Nokia Windows phones and tablets were used in the movie, with absolutely NO close-ups or casually highlighted logos. Characters holding phones – notably, Lois – are using what I’m pretty sure are Nokia 521s, the Daily Planet apparently uses Nokia 2520 Windows RT tablets, and I recognize these things only because I’m a colossal nerd who really liked his Lumia 920. 

Microsoft is not normally subtle with the “we are paying you to have this in the show/movie, you will have one of the characters say ‘let me bing that’ at least once”, so I’m half wondering if the production company couldn’t get either Apple or Samsung to sign off on a deal and, in exasperation, sent an intern down to the nearest strip-mall cell phone store with instructions to bring back some stuff that nobody would recognize. 

I could research this more but I would be forced to watch the movie again and I’m not ready for that just now. 

PS: “The Martian” was super good and you should watch it if you haven’t already. I’m usually way behind the times on finding out about good movies, so I’m guessing this is news to basically nobody.