The hits and misses of the Super Bowl trailers

Traditionally, the Super Bowl advertising spots are not only the most prestigious and expensive of the year, but also serve to showcase the movies that will be the biggest and most thrilling blockbusters of the coming summer. Since the advent of social media and streaming, there is no longer the same giddy thrill at watching a few seconds’ footage, which is usually taken from a more expansive and detailed trailer, but it’s still a clear calling card for studios to suggest which of their forthcoming films they’re most excited by, and which have been quietly set aside. (Awful though I think it looks, however, James Gunn’s Superman, which lacked a new spot, did at least have a short clip with the hoped-for breakout star Krypto the Superdog.)  

Some of these pictures will be great, some will be terrible. Some will be box-office hits, and some will disappoint. (The first and second statements do not necessarily tie up.) But, on first glance, these are the trailers that have us excited — followed by those that have led to little more than a shrug.  

The hits

Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning 

This will be the sixty-two-year old Tom Cruise’s last Mission: Impossible film, apparently, but judged by the previews released so far, he intends to go out on a high, both figuratively and literally. The film is stymied by the box office disappointment of the previous instalment Dead Reckoning, which tried to be clever-clever with its faceless AI antagonist but ended up lacking a truly iconic villain in the process, but one thing that this series has never stinted on is spectacle, and that looks to be present in spades. The thirty-second spot teases a stunning-looking biplane action scene, as well as some Arctic-based shenanigans, but might there be some grand reveal that ties the entire eight-film series together? We shall see in May. 

How to Train Your Dragon 

Live-action adaptations of animated films might make a killing at the box office, but as the progressively underwhelming Disney films are demonstrating, they’re artistically negligible. Dean DeBlois’s new version of How to Train Your Dragon might be the one that turns this around. Although lead actor Mason Thames seems a trifle stiff, the mixture of spectacle, humor and heart all look spot on, helped by DeBlois having worked on the original animated films too. And fair play to the ever-game Gerard Butler for reprising his role as Stoick the Vast, too, creating a welcome sense of continuity.  

Thunderbolts* 

Admittedly, being excited for a Marvel film at this juncture is rather like saying that you’re looking forward to your next bout of heart bypass surgery, but Thunderbolts* (and no, I have no idea what the asterisk is there for) has a few things going for it: the ever-dependable Florence Pugh and the now Oscar-nominated Sebastian Stan in the lead roles, what seems like a goofy, Eighties-inflected sense of fun and, hopefully, the kind of wry approach to ensemble filmmaking that the first Avengers film nailed and that its sequels — and successive Suicide Squad pictures — have all failed to do. Still, with an ensemble of antiheroes, which one’s the true antagonist? Trailer’s keeping schtum, so far.  

Misses 

F1 

From the writer and director of the estimable Top Gun: Maverick, this racing car drama looks at first glance as if it’s doing something very similar, even down to pairing Brad Pitt’s charismatic veteran racer with a similarly untested and cocky rookie. Yet something isn’t gelling so far in the previews. Perhaps it’s because watching actors drive cars very very fast isn’t as intrinsically exciting as the fighter plane thrills of Maverick, or perhaps it’s because the complete absence of any humor or fun makes this look like an ordeal. There may, or may not, be some eye-popping spectacle from the finished film — and a Hans Zimmer score never goes amiss — but this needs a lot more to become an exciting prospect. 

Jurassic World Rebirth 

As my colleague Ross Anderson sagely described it, “every Jurassic World film looks like shit, including this one, and then grosses a billion at the box office. I genuinely do not get it.” Once again, the format seems to be a dinosaur-oriented version of Aliens, but entirely lacking that seminal film’s mounting tension, excitement and wit — as well as having a strangely coy attitude towards exterminating rabid dinosaurs, presumably on the grounds that, having made them extinct once, doing so again would be de trop. In any case, Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey and Mahershala Ali are the game actors dodging CGI critters, Rupert Friend seems to be doing his best corporate lackey as the presumed villain and Gareth Edwards, still best known for having Rogue One taken away from him and turned into an acceptable film, is directing.