A Reel Opinion: The Super Bowl Movie Ads: The Good, The Bad, & The Glorious

With the summer movie season just three months away, major movie studios traditionally take advantage of the Super Bowl’s massive built-in audience. This year nearly every studio went short and sweet. Some worked, some didn’t.

THE GOOD

-You get major points for starting off your spot with Air Force One getting blown out of the sky, and extra points to see Iron Man rocket out of that wounded aircraft and begin rescuing free-falling people. Marvel’s IRON MAN 3 spot was a spectacular eye-catcher, but was just too darn short to be considered any more than “good”. The spot was just a minor slice out of an action sequence, and offered no insight to plot or characters. 

-Fans of the FAST AND THE FURIOUS franchise were very pleased with the spot for the upcoming sixth film in the series. The trailer, very much like the previous films, was packed with car chases, crashes, and muscle-bound heroes (The Rock and Vin Diesel). But did the end of the trailer involve a major spoiler with the return of a character?

THE BAD

-OZ, THE GREAT AND POWERFUL is a prequel to THE WIZARD OF OZ, so they must be banking on everyone already knowing the backdrop. The OZ trailer offered nothing but a blazingly fast montage of images which gave no hint of the story at all. Maybe that’s enough, but if you blinked…you missed it. 

-Although not a trailer for any movie, the Samsung ad which starred stupidass Seth Rogen and stupidass Paul Rudd was unfunny, unwitty, and way too long. 

-You get negative points for not showing up. Major 2013 releases such as MAN OF STEEL, THE WOLVERINE, OBLIVION, Pixar’s MONSTERS UNIVERSITY and GI JOE RETALIATION were curiously absent. 

THE GLORIOUS

-Disney has their hands full in promoting THE LONE RANGER; how do you get around the sidekick (Johnny Depp as Tonto) being a bigger star than the title-character (Armie Hammer as the Lone Ranger)? Disney’s answer seems to be to just promote the film as an action spectacle. The extended spot actually ran during the Pregame Show (of which it was a sponsor), and was presented as a fun and wild thrill-ride. The longer running time gave room to offer a storyline, and the narrative was what drove the action; not the other way around. 

-There has been a lot of mystery surrounding director JJ Abrams’ STAR TREK sequel; like who the villain is and what he is after. The new TREK trailer answered none of those questions, and instead built another layer of mystery surrounding the Big Bad. On top of that, the question of why we see the Enterprise blow up for the 500^th time is now up for endless internet pondering. All this sounds aggravating, but this TREK teaser deserves major points for showing and teasing new material, while at the same time never showing the man behind the curtain. That is a careful balance most never get right.  

-Again, not really a movie trailer, but whoever cast actor Willem Dafoe as the Devil in that Mercedes Benz spot deserves an Oscar. Make that movie, please. 

What say you?