Movies advertising guns
 

I just bought the latest May issue of Glock Autopistol Magazine. I don't know WHY I bought a glock magazine since it isn't my favorite gun mag. Maybe because it was 4 bucks. My favorite is Guns & Ammo

Anyway, an article in it was talking about how some movies were pretty much advertisements for Glocks and it listed several.

This isn't the first magazine article that I've read that asks the question, are gun companies asking movie makers to show better shots of their guns to advertise?

What do you guys think? Movies that have guns appearing are clever cover ads for firearms.

I'd call it product placement, not so much advertising, and I could see it going either way. There's plenty of product placememnt in movies, but Hollywood is so anti-gun, I doubt they would allow movies to spotlight gun brands so people will go out and buy them.

There's a good article about this here (though it's pretty old now):

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,273609,00.html

Is there really that much going on in the world of Glock that it requires a monthly publication to keep up with? Even Guns & Ammo is repetitive. I'd bet that more than 60% of their covers are either M1911's or AR15's.

Well probably 60% of America buys and loves 1911s and AR-15s more than anything else, so that's not unexpected. :D

I could just see it now...Die Hard five...John mcclaine gets surrounded and says "good thing I have my beretta m92fs with me, available at your local gunsmith!"

Beretta 92FS. There's no M in it.

And John McClane's new gun is a SIG 220.

If you want to get technical there is. On the slide it reads MOD. 92FS.

So calling it a M92FS isn't wrong since it being short for Model 92FS which is what it is. Even though most people like myself refer it as a 92FS.

Just like the M1911 is the Model 1911.

M in front of something is usually a military designation. Saying M1911 is correct because it was in the military. Yes it still stands for M, like in M16, but it is incorrect term for shorten the word Model to M for anything not military.

The US military uses the M9 which is the military variant of the 92F, so the M for that makes sense. M in front of 92F doesn't make sense but saying Model 92F is correct.

And it even states on the Beretta 92 pistol series page that "M92" is incorrect spelling.

One of the most famous examples of gun/movie product placement world would be the S&W Model 29 44 magnum in Dirty Harry . I know big surprise.

Anyway the Model 29 was not a real big seller in the fourteen years prior to that movie (I believe it was introduced in 1956). As a matter of fact S&W hadn't made any any for about a year prior to the movie's release because the demand was low enough that there were still plenty out on the market from previous production runs.

That movie changed everything. Not only did it catapult the 44 magnum into the mainstream (it was (originally) a very specialized load for hunters), but the unreal demand for Smith & Wesson's Model 29 revolver encouraged Ruger to develop the Super Redhawk. No doubt it also encouraged other gun companies to develop their own 44 magnum revolver.

John Milius should have gotten royalties from S&W.

How exactly do game developers and movie makers get permission for real gun names?
 

Movies advertising guns? U.S. Marshals is nothing if not a feature-length Glock commercial!

Still, there's something that has been bothering me for a while now, and I'd like to see if anyone here has the answers. What does it take for game developers and movie makers to use real gun names in their media?

The fee to use real gun names must be steep (anyone have a ballpark figure?), or otherwise more game developers would deign to use the real names of (realistic-looking) guns rather than using assumed names or creating fictional weapons. One of the pages I've created for a game, SWAT 4, even has the rather interesting situation of having real gun names only for Colt, Benelli, and AK firearms. Another page (not created by me), Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, has the real name for the Colt Anaconda and the Steyr AUG, but not the Colt Police Positive or any other firearms. I take it that each company has to be consulted before you can use the real names for its products, then? Do you have to negotiate with each company separately too? Are the requirements different for movie makers than they are for game developers?

Finally, sometimes I feel that super popular games such as Metal Gear Solid 4 or Modern Warfare 2 sell so much as to be advertisements for firearms companies themselves. Do those companies then offer the game publishers a discount for using the real names of certain weapons? There's still that strange feeling I get when I see in the MGS4 page that there are no Colt weapons but still M1911 pistols and an M4A1 carbine, since those count as types of firearms and are not copyrightable terms.

Well, the 1911 design and name is over 100 years old now, so any copyright on it has been expired for some years (in the US, I think copyright duration is the life of the creator plus 70 years).

As far as Colt and the M4 carbine go, the Supreme Court ruled Colt's trademark of the designation "M4" invalid because the term has more or less become a generic name for AR-15/M16 carbines. And "M4A1" is a military designation and as a work of the US federal government, is in the public domain. AFAIK, that is.

Often, though, it is copyrights that prevent usage of a weapon's actual name. The F2000 in Splinter Cell being renamed SC-20K is an example of such.

Thanks, but that's info I already knew--maybe someone else here like MPM2008 can answer my other questions.

I have the sneaking suspicion, however, that while H&K and FN gave their blessings to Kojima to use their copyrighted names for their weapons, Colt probably told hime to screw off, or else asked for too much money to use their company name. That's why in MGS4 they're not COLT M1911s or COLT M4A1s, even though Colt is probably the most well-known American firearms manufacturer, even to people who don't know guns.

Why wouldnt brands let their name be used? Its free advertising.

My personal theory is that it's more of an assumption on the part of the game developers that firearm manufacturers would enforce their copyrights without there ever being any precedent of them doing so. Video games were not the entertainment powerhouse in the early 90's that they are now, so it would make sense for them to just skirt the issue entirely by just making fake names for everything instead of taking the risk of potentially raising the ire of the entire weapons industry.

As far as I know, the first game to use realistic looking firearms was Goldeneye 007, everything in that game had a fake name while still remaining identifiable. I'd bet that if there was anything released before that, it too used fake names.

And as far as using real names, I think Rainbow 6 was the first, and nothing happened to them.

If I'm wrong about either, I'd welcome the correction.

If i was in charge, id make sure that video games were allowed to use my brand, then all the video gamers would buy my guns:)

Strange things
 

It's not relevant to this wiki, but I could take a screenshot of one of the opening screens to SWAT 4 where there's lots of legal screed showing how the use the Colt and Benelli trademarks "with permission," which means Sierra Entertainment (now part of Activision, which merged with Blizzard to form Activision-Blizzard or Acti-Blizz) had to approach those two companies to get permission to use their product names.

Why Glock and H&K didn't also approve of their product names being used for SWAT 4 is beyond me. Aren't Glock pistols and the H&K MP5 two of the most prevalent and therefore the most symbolic examples of police weaponry?