Having followed the whole thread, Apos, I don’t think people are saying that he should not have referenced McDonalds, period. I think they are saying that if he had wanted to make a movie about generic junk food irrespective of any particular vendor, which is the argument that the OP is having with Dio, he failed miserably because everything from the film’s title to the film’s contents points exclusively to McDonalds. It isn’t that Spurlock shouldn’t have made a film about McDonalds, but that, having in fact done so, he shouldn’t be representing it as something else.
Having also followed the entire thread, I’m just saying that when you make a film, you pick your iconic symbols. You can make a disjointed film about all the fast food chains, or you can make one that uses as its iconic theme the biggest and most pervasive, but is still not “about” just that one company. The theme is also a factor of the stunt coming out of the lawsuit, which is specifically targeted at McDonalds. But even with all the focus on McDonalds (for reference, virtually every “chapter” is a strange painting of a Ronald McDonald-type scene) I didn’t feel that the film was a hit-piece against McDonalds exclusively, or even necessarily a hit piece at all, and having seen it, I could understand why Spurlock would object to that particular characterization. News pieces all the time give primary focus to a single bad doctor in order to explore the wider phenomenon of malpractice, without having to defend their work as being targeted all only at that single doctor or even “about” that doctor alone.
Look at what he’s accomplished. McDonald’s is in the process of dropping Super Sizes and he’s made $7 million. If he had concentrated his efforts on the people who can’t afford to eat healthier, he might have had a greater impact.
I haven’t really seen him representing it as something else, nor have I seen him making sure others don’t see it that way. That is the problem.
Any news piece that does that is a piece of dreck as far as I’m concerned. It is a sweeping generalization fallacy. At any rate, I’ve explained to you what were the concerns of the OP. Your response is like coming in to an argument about the Smith-Morra Gambit to point out that the 5th move in the King’s Indian is not controversial.