The Super Bowl is a prime opportunity for Hollywood to showcase what they have coming up for the year. With a captive audience to work with, it’s their time to reach eyes and ears of a very wide audience and sell some tickets. After several lean years, the trailers are back for real, and last night’s Super Bowl LVII delivered.
Previewing a new film in commercial breaks is always a challenge. With only 30 seconds or so to work with, editing is key. The spots have to get their story across while providing some sort of spectacle to capture those eyes and ears. Here’s how they all landed in The Good, The Bad, and The Glorious:
The Good
65 – This quick spot only had one mission: to show Adam Driver shooting dinosaurs. And that it did.
TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF THE BEASTS – There always seems to be a Transformers trailer in the Super Bowl, and this one was coupled with a Porsche ad. Not much story was revealed here, but it did deliver what we want to see from these movies: cars and robots.
GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3 – The long-awaited return of our favorite bunch of galactic morons worked as a teaser for the new longer trailer (kind of annoying), but landed well because it focused on the best part of these heroes: their witty and funny banter between each other.
AIR – This Ben Affleck-directed drama about the historic merging of Nike and Michael Jordan gave us a well-timed trailer that was a condensed version of the full trailer earlier in the week. The message got across very well, and with a sports-minded audience, felt right at home.
CREED III – The third ROCKY spinoff also took advantage of the sports audience, and gave us this crunching trailer with some intense emotion.
COCAINE BEAR – This based-on-a-true-story comedy about a bear that ingested cocaine delivered a trailer that was exactly what we would expect from a movie with a title like that. No complaints here.
The Bad
FAST X – The 10th (!) film in the FAST AND THE FURIOUS franchise was just a whole lot of noise as usual.
-You get negative points for not showing up. There were noticeable absences from upcoming high-profile films such as the SHAZAM sequel, The next JOHN WICK romp, THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE, Marvel’s THE MARVELS, and Pixar’s ELEMENTAL.
The Glorious
-Disney may have shortchanged their Marvel and Pixar films, but they crushed it with their 100th anniversary spot, which featured some of the most memorable and emotional moments from their long cinematic history.
INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY – This action-packed spot featured our favorite archeologist punching Nazi scum (more of that, please), and a tremendous line from our equally beloved Sallah: GIVE ‘EM HELL, INDIANA JONES!
THE FLASH – The most anticipated trailer of the night became the most talked about. The Warner Bros. superhero spot about the fastest man alive gave hints to the storyline of universe-hopping, and then brought down the house with Michael Keaton’s long-awaited return as Batman. This film has suffered from many delays and bad press, and this spot went a long way in repairing the damage, and probably snagged some eyes and ears for a theatre ticket or two. And selling tickets will always be the bottom line.
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Super Bowl LVIII will be played February 11, 2024.
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