Now I'm excited to watch this movie! Watch the whole trailer, you'll love it!

 

I saw the trailer posted to an Autoblog article late last week. I hope the movie is as fun as the trailer makes it out to be. Peter Dinklage and the rest of the cast certainly look good on paper. If it is half as good as Wreck it Ralph was, it'll be great. YMMV.

 

Looks like a great use of MINIs...

Motor on!

 

Are you guys for real? We went from Italian Job to this? This initiative is completely ridiculous and gives a poor image of the brand.

 

What brand image will it damage? I thought MINIs were encouraged to be different. We give our cars silly names. We put fun stickers and grill magnets. They give us a wide variety of fun colors. The latest MINI TV commercial is a bulldog getting confused by the 4-door.

We beat our chests because our cars have personality and soul. Now, you have a mainstream movie who features MINIs with personalities, we complain?

If I want a serious, no personality car, I would have opted for a GTI or WRX.

 

Apparently you haven't seen or heard of the "Not Normal" campaign. This fits right in, no?

 

It couldn't be further away, to be honest. Not Normal is a way MINI uses to differentiate the brand and celebrate its quirks. Starring in a cheesy, big-budget action film starring Adam Sandler where video games attack Earth sounds as generic and cookie cutter as one can get.
Painfully Normal, in fact.

 

Do you really think that an Adam Sandler production is in line with the values of the brand, especially since most of his movies are flops and really stupid? Granted his production house makes tones of money - because apparently people like stupid movies - from my point of view the downside of how this makes MINI look outweigh the business opportunity.

MotoringFile covered the state of MINI marketing here and here, and suffice to say it hasn't been great lately.

Also I believe you misunderstood the ad you referenced with the bulldog being "confused". This ad basically make MINI drivers look like idiots because the guy can't figure out where the front door is. His dog is not confused, he is probably thinking: "dude, are you really more stupid than a dog?".