This year, five film studios have paid an estimated $4.5m a shot to preview their biggest new movies in the Super Bowl ad breaks. There was no Batman V Superman, but we did get a bumper selection of explosions, robots and – in the most hotly anticipated trailer, genetically modified dinosaurs.
Jurassic World
Turns out that making a genetically modified dinosaur wasn’t the greatest idea ever. The trailer starts with a dead Great White shark hoisted on a line and an MC at a gigantic pool saying “OK folks, she’s a little shy so give her a hand when she comes out.” Cue a massive pair of jaws shooting into the camera and chomping the shark down like a packet of peanuts. In the next wildly entertaining 60 or so seconds we get Chris Pratt trying to keep three dinosaurs at bay with his bare hands; a slavering pair of gigantic jaws chomping somewhere near his left ear; a pterodactyl plucking a woman out of a stampeding crowd and hoisting her into the air; and finally two children watching the dinosaur through thick glass ... which is then penetrated by a giant talon.
Tomorrowland
It’s another theme park gone bad as George Clooney inquires “What if there was a place where nothing was impossible, where you could build whatever you were crazy enough to imagine? A place where you could actually change the world?” The place, as revealed in the ad, looks like Dubai on steroids from the outside and a steampunk-style wilderness of complicated clocks and TV screens on the inside. “You want to go?” asks Clooney. Not particularly, George, but it looks like we’re going anyway. With a “buckle on!” Clooney’s rocket soars into the stratosphere.
Terminator Genisys
It starts in understated style with a yellow school bus performing a vertical somersault on the Golden Gate Bridge and builds from there. An elderly Arnie is back with Emilia Clarke from Game of Thrones as Sarah Conner, and he’s hoisting her up as she’s dangling off the bridge, while somewhere the terminator – all exposed metal pecs – walks through an explosion. There’s someone jumping through a window and throwing knives at an undisclosed foe who is probably our heroes, and then Arnie saying – of course – “I’ll be back” just before he jumps out of a helicopter and into apparent oblivion.
Furious 7
“The most important thing in life will always be family,” says Vin Diesel at the top of this trailer, over scenes of an idyllic family barbecue. Needless to say the peace doesn’t last as Jason Statham hoves into view and a massive explosion reduces the family home to a charred shell. “Remember Owen Shaw? This is his big, bad brother,” apparently, and before we know it the franchise otherwise known as Fast and Furious is firing in typical style with cars being driven out of planes, women in silk negligees punching each other in the face and finally a car being driven out of the window of a massive skyscraper and into the window of another one. Woah!
Minions
It’s the cheesy wotsit-looking sidekicks from Despicable Me, and now they’ve got their own movie. Unlike the other high-octane trailers, Minions chooses wit over blowing things up, with a Minion who starts a streaking epidemic by whipping off his dungarees and enticing his compadres to “swing those pants”. The most Super Bowl-appropriate trailer shown tonight.
The Divergent Series: Insurgent
Unlike the choppy likes of Terminator Genisys, the sequel to Divergent, which aired in the pregame show rather than during the match itself, has a trailer which does one dramatic thing in slow motion. Shailene Woodley as Tris Prior escapes from some black rubber restraints and jumps through a glass screen towards Kate Winslet and rugby tackles her. But something goes horribly wrong and the next thing we know Tris has been shot out of the building and falling in slow motion through a landscape of collapsing skyscrapers. But it can’t be so bad because “She is the one”, according to the words flashing on the screen.
Seventh Son
“Since the beginning of time we have protected mankind. You are the seventh son of a seventh son and war is coming.” So goes the voiceover which sets up the premise for this fantasy film starring Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore and Ben Barnes as the titular hero. War looks like it entails four-armed men, ghouls, dragons and a cyclops, but fortunately here’s Barnes in a monk’s cowl to sort it all out.
Kingsman: the Secret Service
We’ve already reviewed this film, but the trailer will give you the measure of it. Basically it’s a riff on James Bond with even more violence - albeit tongue-in-cheek - and the likes of Colin Firth enjoying the ride.
Avengers: Age of Ultron
This is an edited version of the full-length trailer that appeared online earlier this month. Most of it shows the Hulk and Iron Man in the Hulkbuster suit pulverising each other and making quite a mess of the Big Apple while they’re at it.
The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water
The titular hero and his mates have joined forced to break to the surface and run amok in the real world – which involves a sugar-fuelled rampage around landmarks including Stonehenge.
Hot Tub Time Machine 2
“If you’re going to take on the patriots, make sure their balls are fully inflated,” says one of the few Super Bowl-relevant trailers. It’s accompanied by footage of a man lying on a gurney with rapidly swelling testicles, getting over the tone of the gags in an economical 15 seconds.
Pitch Perfect 2
Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson are back as a capella choirs the Barden Bellas. This trailer features the Green Bay Packers singing Destiny’s Child’s Bootylicious and Kendrick singing Before He Cheats by Carrie Underwood. It’s kitsch, brassy and funny.
Ted 2
We reviewed the full trailer here, saying: “part of the fun of the first Ted was its genuine irreverence. But there’s something slightly too on-the-button about a lot of choices here: music cues, meta-stereotyping, bad taste laughs which don’t seem quite uproarious enough. Plus, of course, there’s A Million Ways to Die in the West.”
50 Shades of Grey
“It’s just behind this door ... my playroom.”
“What, your X Box and stuff?”
Um, not exactly. It’s Jamie Dornan as the sadistic Christian Grey and Dakota Johnson as Anastasia Steele in the film whose trailer, this trailer trumpets, has been viewed 250m times. Meta. It’s a fantasy world of skyscrapers, swanky flats and silk stockings suggesting, like the book, that the real desires unleashed are more financial than sexual.
