The Wedding Crashers comic duo Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson are back in this side-splitting movie, The Internship. Despite what looks to be the biggest-ever product placement in a movie, this trailer screams generational gaps.
Next Generation Marketing: The Internship was promoted using Google and debuted during a live Google+ Hangout hosted by Conan O'Brien.
About The Internship: Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson are salesmen whose careers have been crushed by the digital age. Trying to prove they are not obsolete, they defy the odds by talking their way into a coveted internship at Google, along with a battalion of brilliant college students. But, gaining entrance to this utopia is only half the battle. Now they must compete with a group of the nation's most elite, tech-savvy geniuses to prove that necessity really is the mother of re-invention.
Owen Wilson: "We are looking at some sort of mental Hunger Games against a bunch of genius kids for a handful of jobs."
The Internship is a (hopefully) hilarious depiction of the talent war that is waging in today's workplace. As our connected economy becomes more tech-dependant those comfortable in the digital space will have an upper hand. I fear that The Internship storyline will become more of the norm than an outlandish plot for a Hollywood movie. Older generations will have to compete at a new level for high-demand jobs and will have to become tech-savvy OR will have to get good at coaching. We get a glimpse of this in the trailer, Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson struggle to keep up with the output of the young workers so they result to coaching/directing/inspiring the young workforce (example at min 1:26).
Side Thought: I am interested to see how this movie will impact Google's recruitment of the next generation talent since Google's culture will be front and center for 116 minutes on the silver screen. Perhaps the film will inspire more corporate culture shifts to mirror Google and infuse ping pong tables, writing on walls, rubix cube games, no dress code, superhero references and hack-a-thons as part of the value-add to their employees.
The Internship opens in theaters June 7, 2013.
Question: How do you think this movie trailer depicts the generational friction of today's workplace?
