A Reel Review: The Super Bowl Movie Trailers

 With squillions of eyeballs on the Super Bowl every year, the opportunity for studios to market their upcoming films to people who wouldn’t otherwise be interested is a huge one. This year’s crop of trailers isn’t as large as it’s been in years past, but they still gave us plenty to talk about. Here now are the notable movie trailers which ran during Super Bowl XLIX (that’s 49, for you mortals)…the Good, the Bad, and the Glorious. 

The Good

FURIOUS 7 – The seventh installment in the car-chasing cops and robbers franchise started off in low gear with a hint of cinematic maturity, before hammering down the gas pedal and going batshit crazy with cars flying a mile off the ground. Non-fans of the franchise were probably rolling their eyes, but those who have been along for the ride from the beginning should have been pleased. 

MINIONS – Those little yellow bastards from the DESPICABLE ME films finally get their own spinoff. This trailer appropriately had a football-theme, was very funny, and probably introduced the world to the possible catch-phrase of the year…”swing those pants baby!” 

TED 2 – The trailer to the Seth MacFarlane-directed, talking teddy-bear sequel had Mark Wahlberg and the bear invading the, um…privacy of New England quarterback Tom Brady. Kind of silly of course, but it seems like this trailer was shot and cut just for the Super Bowl…which makes it timely and worthy of credit for putting in the effort. 

The Bad

TERMINATOR GENISYS – This trailer may have had Arnie giving us his famous catchphrase, but what ruined it was the horrible music choice which made it seem more like a NIN video. Just stick to the original score. 

50 SHADES OF GREY – The trailer to the hotly-anticipated book adaptation spent most of its time telling us how many copies of the book have been sold and how many online-hits the first trailer has pulled in so far; basically telling us how great the book is and how the marketing has been going. Very off-putting. 

THE NO-SHOWS – You get negative points for not showing up. There were noticeable absences from big releases such as THE FANTASTIC FOUR…and the major Disney films AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, ANT-MAN, STAR WARS EPISODE VII, and the two Disney/Pixar films INSIDE OUT and THE GOOD DINOSAUR. In Disney’s defense, they are probably thinking that their films can sell themselves on name alone, as the logos for Pixar, Marvel, and STAR WARS go a long way at this point. With that in mind, Disney was likely saving their efforts for marketing their new, unknown property, which 

leads us to…

The Glorious

TOMORROWLAND – This futuristic Disney flick was brought to the Super Bowl masses in the form of a slick trailer with stunning visuals, new footage, and an excellent voiceover by George Clooney. The trailer was full of magic and wonder…which is what Disney is all about.  

JURASSIC WORLD – There has been a lot of apprehension about the upcoming fourth entry in the film series involving engineered dinosaurs causing havoc in modern times, but the Super Bowl spot was perfect on every angle. The trailer was heavy on appearances with the leading man, Chris Pratt, who is very recognizable right now, and the inclusion of the original John Williams music brought back memories in a stampede. Plenty of new footage was shown, but most importantly, they took the time to improve upon the shots we saw in the first trailer a few months back. The wider shots had much-improved visual effects and it was clear that Universal Pictures put some serious effort and overall thought into it and it showed. Well done all around. 

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Super Bowl 50 will be played on February 7, 2016.