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What was the point of the Rhianna song?

I was trying to enjoy the credits and the Rihanna song but the theater employees basically ushered us out so they could clean.
For the brief time I got to listen... it worked.
 
I like the song, even though it only popped up during the end credits, and seemingly had nothing to do with anything. :)
 
Really, how many pop songs featured in movies do have anything to do with the stories, unless they're actually written for the movie, like the song in the Pacific Rim credits? Usually they're just licensed to sell albums. I mean, what did "Kiss from a Rose" have to do with Batman Forever? (If anything, that would've been a better fit for Batman and Robin, what with Poison Ivy being in that one.)

Anyway, as I said, the lyrics of "Sledgehammer" are pretty clearly about someone breaking free of an unhappy and probably abusive relationship, or more metaphorically about someone who felt trapped and helpless finding the strength to break free from the person who had kept them in that situation. I can see the thematic relevance to a movie about the crew being captured, thrown into a slave-labor camp, and trying to escape. The line about "using all my strength to get out of this hole" could even be seen as applying to the crew's struggle to get off Altamid and back into space.
 
Anyway, as I said, the lyrics of "Sledgehammer" are pretty clearly about someone breaking free of an unhappy and probably abusive relationship, or more metaphorically about someone who felt trapped and helpless finding the strength to break free from the person who had kept them in that situation. I can see the thematic relevance to a movie about the crew being captured, thrown into a slave-labor camp, and trying to escape. The line about "using all my strength to get out of this hole" could even be seen as applying to the crew's struggle to get off Altamid and back into space.

Agreed. Yeah, it can really be as simplistic as that. Even if the song wasn't made specifically for Trek, as long as there are some parallels that can be drawn from the song, no matter the intent of the songwriter, it works. REM's "It's the End of the World as We Know It" is funny and relevant in Independence Day even though the song predates the movie by a good nine years. Or, I hate how how the insipidly peppy "I'm Walking on Sunshine" is used in so, so many commercials, TV shows, and movies (imo used well only in Futurama!), but the song's clearly chosen to evoke certain emotions, or the action on screen just happens to go well with the lyrics. It's perhaps one of the most prominent examples we have of taking a song because of a thematic match.
 
I don't understand how this has 5 pages of discussion, but the point of the song was to get younger demographic eyeballs on Star Trek Beyond. That's it.
 
I don't understand how this has 5 pages of discussion, but the point of the song was to get younger demographic eyeballs on Star Trek Beyond. That's it.

Well this is a board where one former member actually complained about the success of the 2009 movie by saying that the real Star Trek movies are the ones that lose money and don't appeal to a larger audience and that's what they should've kept on making instead.
 
I don't understand how this has 5 pages of discussion, but the point of the song was to get younger demographic eyeballs on Star Trek Beyond. That's it.
Or just to give people something to listen to while they're watching the credits scroll upward. Doesn't need to have any more point than that.
 
Or just to give people something to listen to while they're watching the credits scroll upward. Doesn't need to have any more point than that.

That's what end title themes are for. Song licensing in movies is about cross-promotion. Generally it's about putting a pop song on the soundtrack album in hopes of selling more copies thereof, or using a music video as an additional bit of advertising for the movie it's associated with. In return, musicians license their songs to movies in exchange for a licensing fee and the additional exposure it gets them.

In general, any and every question about why something is done in the entertainment industry can be answered on some level with "To make (or save) money." It is a business, after all, not a charity.
 
Usually, when they have a song during the credits, it vaguely, at least, is thematically connected to the story in some way. It might be really close (like how "Back in Time" retells parts of Back to the Future) or not (the songs for the Spider-Man movies could be listened to outside of the context of the films and enjoyed as-is). So, what's the problem?
 
The pop song attached to THE SHADOW ("Original Sin" by Taylor Dayne) actually contains the lyric "license to thrill" which makes me wonder sometimes if the song started out as a rejected Bond tune. :)
 
It did have a Bond feel, which I liked.

It was to increase "buzz" about the movie. I don't begrudge that.
 
Lovely Ri-ri singing for Star Trek. That was awesome although I like her previous work better!
 
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