Outside of the USA, the significance of the annual Superbowl is felt primarily through the advertisements that play throughout the broadcast. Many of the highest profile ads are for the upcoming American Summer movie season.
In this Special Superbowl Edition of the my regular Trailer Review Awesomeness Assessments, I’ll be judging just how awesome this year’s crop of movie ads are:
Star Trek Into Darkness
Having to cram everything cool about a movie into 30 seconds can often render Superbowl spots to be a flurry of indiscernible activity. This trailer manages to keep things a bit more streamlined by focusing on what I am most anticipating about this movie – Benedict Cumberbatch.
His character gets most of the lines in the spot while J.J. Abrams’ admirable regard for keeping fundamental aspects of his films secret ahead of time means we still don’t know a huge amount about the nature of his villain. The mysteriousness is working on me.
Incidentally, is it just me or is Star Trek Into Darkness starting to feel like kind of an afterthought following the revelation that Abrams will be making a new Star Wars film?
I can’t deny it’s made me less excited for his Trek, but I guess we’ll all be watching closely for clues as to what he could bring to Wars.
Awesomeness Factor: 7
Iron Man 3
Even more so than the Star Trek Into Darkness trailer, this spot benefits from a singular focus – in this case a rad mid-air set piece involving plummeting civilians. I’m on record as a big fan of falling deaths, so I just hope some of those people who fall out of the plane don’t survive.
The first Iron Man 3 trailer bored me with its yawn-inducing emphasis on a big-but-bland set-piece: the destruction of the Stark mansion. I like that this spot focuses on what appears to be a much cooler moment from the film, but I’m still not completely convinced that the film overall is going to sufficiently eliminate memories of Iron Man 2‘s disappointing action set-pieces.
Awesomeness Factor: 8
Fast and Furious 6
As the only Superbowl movie trailer to present the very first look at the movie it’s promoting, there was an onus on this spot to make a real impact.
I am a giant sucker for this resilient action franchise, and although the plot hinted at in this 60 second spot makes me concerned that our heroes are undermining the rebellious lifestyle they’ve promoted in the last few entries by selling out and teaming up with Dwayne Johnson’s G-man, I must admit this trailer really got my action juices flowing.
The presence of the tank makes sense. It’s the only land vehicle (along with Bigfoot) that hasn’t yet been involved in the franchise. Speaking of which, the campaign to get Bigfoot in Fast and Furious 7 starts here!
Aside from all the big crazy action insanity, the trailer-ending revelation that Michelle Rodriguez’s character Letty is alive is hugely un-exciting. This franchise has already brought every single other character ever involved back (some from the dead), I’m just mad that Eva Mendes, whose character from 2 Fast 2 Furious (the least-liked film in the franchise, but my personal favourite) was teased in a post-credits scene at the end of Fast and Furious 5, doesn’t appear to be involved. Uncool.
What is cool though is hearing The Rock say: “I need your help, Dom.” Anytime, Dwayne!
Awesomeness Factor: 9
Oz: The Great and Powerful
A friend of mine observed of this spot: “The only new footage seen is explosions”. That’s more or less accurate. I’ll see the film for sure, but the shamelessly derivative nature of this project has rendered me unable to muster up much enthusiasm despite the presence of Sam Raimi in the director’s chair.
This spot failed to change my mind about the film. Beyond the now ubiquitous fireballs, there’s extra emphasis here on teasing the Wicked Witch of the West by evoking the character as portrayed in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz, a film this is officially (for legal reasons) not a prequel to. How that all works out I’m not quite sure, but an extra point is garnered here for the flying baboons, because y’know, flying baboons.
Awesomeness Factor: 5
World War Z
Not much in the way of new zombie footage here, but this is still a slick-enough spot to further my excitement for this film which many are choosing to write-off ahead of time for its lack of faithfulness to the source material.
I wanna give this film a chance to be something awesome in its own right. I wish this spot had jumped into the grue a bit earlier though, bothering with the familial intro only prevented the presence of further rad zombie stuff. I hope the film doesn’t follow that same pattern.
Awesomeness Factor: 8
The Lone Ranger
This 90 second spot has two apparent motives – to build up the mythology of the title character and to enhance the film’s perceived resemblance to the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, with which The Lone Ranger shares a director, producer and a leading man.
It succeeds in both regards, but the latter motive is not a plus for me. Did anyone at all like the second and third Pirates movies? Is anyone excited to see Johnny Depp do a funny accent again? The mythology-building stuff is nice though and I’ll always welcome extra train action, which makes up a lot of the new footage seen here.
This film kinda got me on side with it’s most recent full-length trailer, and its coolest scene (in my eyes) – when the title character wakes up high atop a scaffold set up on a desert outcrop – is missing from this spot. Stink.
Awesomeness Factor: 6
Snitch
The plot of this film looks like it was borrowed from an episode of ’80s TV action staple The A-Team – it couldn’t be more generic.
However, the last time Dwayne Johnson made what at first glance appeared to be a boring action thriller, the result was the superlatively awesome and underrated Faster. So I’m onboard for this film.
But the lack of awesomeness in this spot is undeniable.
Awesomeness Factor: 3
