Super Bowl 53 is in the books. There literally nothing to enjoy about this sporting event. It was a dull, mistake-filled game, with a predictable ending. Seriously, if you thought The Patriots weren’t going to win, you were kidding yourself.
Then there was that Pepsi Halftime Show, and holy Lord that was a forgettable mess of a performance.
Like many pop culture fans, I was hoping that like last year we’d get some really great trailers.
However, this year what we got instead were 20-30 blink-and-you-miss-them teasers. The longest film trailer? It was probably Hobbs and Shaw. Yeah, that trailer you watched already on Friday. Seriously, we saw longer trailers for Young Sheldon.
Speaking of TV, we threw in a couple of trailers in for TV as well.
So let’s get down to ranking the Super Bowl 53 trailers.
13. Wonder Park
Release Date: March 15, 2019
Voices: Brianna Denski, Jennifer Garner, Kenan Thompson, Mila Kunis, Ken Jeong, John Oliver, Matthew Broderick
Director: David Feiss, Clare Kilner, Robert Iscove
To quote our former film editor Dan Cohen, this movie looks generic as hell. This reminds me of every other animals talk animated feature from this century — Over the Hedge, Flushed Away, Home on the Range, The Nut Job, and Open Season. In short, this makes money because kids’ll want to see it.
12. Alita: Battle Angel
Release Date: February 14, 2019
Cast: Rosa Salazar, Eiza González, Mahershala Ali, Jennifer Connelly, Lana Condor, Michelle Rodriguez, Ed Skrein, Christoph Waltz, Jackie Earle Haley, Casper Van Dien.
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Alita: Battle Angel looks interesting. Visually unique. Interesting cast. Robert Rodriguez’s first movie in years. But the fact this film was pushed back at least twice, and the trailer really looks bland does not give me a lot of hope here. Would this serve better for a streaming service? Probably.
11. Our Planet
Release Date: April 5, 2019
Sir David Attenborough’s latest documentary looks like the rest of his documentaries — gorgeous. However, at the end of the day this trailer was just well shot moments of animals in the wild, and nothing more.
10. Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw
Release Date: August 2, 2019
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Idris Elba, Eiza González, Vanessa Kirby.
Director: David Leitch (Atomic Blonde, John Wick 2)
Jason Statham and Dwayne Johnson have to battle a superhuman Idris Elba? Sign us up. This trailer is a lot of fun, but the reason it ranks so low on the list is because we saw this entire trailer already. Honestly, I’ve never seen any of the Fast & Furious movies featuring Johnson and Statham, but it honestly doesn’t look like you need at this point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuWg6AyzETg
9. Handmaids Tale Season 3
Release Date: Sometime in 2019
Starring: Elisabeth Moss, Yvonne Strahovski, Joseph Fiennes
Hulu knows how to cut really good trailers for Handmaids Tale. The sophomore season of the series was divisive — some loved it, while others were frustrated with the narrative direction (but not the message) of the series. This trailer is very clever with its mock PSA devolving into complete hellish chaos. It’ll be interesting to see a full trailer on this season.
8. Captain Marvel
Release Date: March 8, 2019
Starring: Brie Larsen, Jude Law, Samuel L. Jackson, Lashana Lynch, Annette Benning
Director: Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck (the team behind It’s Kind of a Funny Story, Half Nelson)
Maybe I’m expecting too much with this film, but none of these Captain Marvel trailers have been a home run for me. It looks like a good film. I’m stoked for Brie Larsen in this role. The trailers just seem to be lacking something. Remember when those Wonder Woman trailers came out, and everyone was like, “Hot damn this looks a good movie!” It’s missing that quality. This trailer a little throttling of the music that would cut on action of various characters. It’s good, but we’ve seen better.
7. Us
Release Date: March 22, 2019
Starring: Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Evan Alex, Shahadi Wright-Joseph, Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker.
Director: Jordan Peele
This trailer is not that much different from the original trailer we saw a few weeks ago. Yes, there’s some new smaller moments to latch onto, but the gist is basically the same as the original. That gist? Holy Lord this film is going to rip our minds in half while scaring us to death.
6. Hanna
Release Date: February 3, 2019
Starring: Esme Creed-Miles, Joel Kinnaman, Mireille Enos
Of all the new properties (that CBS didn’t own) this was trailer that got the most time. This. I guess because Amazon has a bazillion dollars they can afford a longer spot. End rant. The movie Hanna, which this series is based on, is a really underrated gem. This show, which has its premiere episode streaming for 24 hours, looks solid. I like the fact Joel Kinnaman and Mireille Enos from The Killing are reunited here. This show could be a solid entry from Amazon, but man it would’ve made a lot more sense to drop say Jack Ryan Season 2 for 24 hours rather than this.
5. Avengers: Endgame
Release Date: April 26, 2019
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Bradley Cooper, Don Cheadle, Jeremy Renner, Scarlett Johnasson.
Director: The Russo Brothers (Avengers: Infinity War)
This trailer has me hooked way more than that first one. It has this sense of urgency to it. It has a sense of anger, and intensity and less of this sweeping “hey it’s a comic book movie” feel to it than we’ve seen from other Avengers trailers. No jokes. No cuteness. Just “let’s get ready to do this.” Simple. Effective. Two words that don’t usually apply to Marvel trailers (unless you’re Black Panther).
4. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
Release Date: August 2019
Starring: Zoe Colletti, Michael Garza, Austin Abrams, Gabriel Rush, Austin Zajur, Natalie Ganzhorn, Dean Norris, Gil Bellows, Lorraine Toussaint, Javier Botet.
Director: André Øvredal (Trollhunter)
I posted all four spots here because we really only saw one (The Red Spot), right? These quick clips are the perfect marketing tool for the Guillermo del Toro produced anthology film which seemingly dropped out of nowhere yesterday. Literally, here’s the poster. Everyone’s surprised. Then here’s the teasers. They are pretty frightening, so watch with the lights on, for sure.
3. The Twilight Zone
Release Date: April 1, 2019
Starring: Adam Scott, Sanaa Lathan, John Cho, Allison Tolman, Jacob Tremblay, Erica Tremblay, Steven Yeun, Greg Kinnear, DeWanda Wise, Jessica Williams, Lucinda Dryzek, Jefferson White, Jonathan Whitesell, Taissa Farmiga, Rhea Seehorn, Luke Kirby, Ike Barinholtz, and Percy Hynes-White
Jordan Peele is having a nice run isn’t he? US. Twilight Zone. Toy Story 4. Not bad. This trailer is clever as hell. Erasing the crowd from the Big Game, and replacing them multiple Jordan Peeles, one of whom steps into a door and disappears. Freaky. This teaser was super effective because now we’re going to have to get CBS All Access now, aren’t we?
2. Toy Story 4
Release Date: June 21, 2019
Voices: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Annie Potts, Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Tony Hale, Joan Cusack, Blake Clark, Wallace Shawn, Timothy Dalton, John Ratzenberger, Kristen Schaal, Bonnie Hunt, Michael Keaton, Estelle Harris, Jeff Garlin, Laurie Metcalf, Keanu Reeves.
Director: Josh Cooley (writer of Inside Out)
The Toy Story 4 trailers have all been pretty wonderful. This time around we finally get to see some (potential) moments from the film. We see the return of Bo Peep, plus Ducky and Bunny (who were introduced in a previous teaser) interacting with Buzz. So looks like Buzz has somehow ended up a prize at a carnival — so there’s definitely another rescue mission involved in this film. Let’s face it. This trailer didn’t need to exist because all you had to really do was slap a logo and release date on Facebook for this film and it’d make a billion dollars.
1. Budweiser & Game of Thrones
Release Date: April 14, 2019
Starring: Peter Dinklage, Kit Harrington, Lena Headey, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau , Emilia Clarke, Sophie Turner, Maisie Williams.
This was easily the best trailer/teaser of the night. We were subject to numerous Bud Light ads through the game. This looked to be another one, and as we rolled our eyes and awaited either a Dilly! Dilly! or “Bud Light doesn’t use corn syrup” utterance — we got The Mountain…CRUSHING THE BUD LIGHT KNIGHT’S SKULL. Oh and then…A DRAGON. Oh, by the way — it’s a Game of Thrones teaser. It was a great surprise that no one saw coming. Some will say it was a cheap crossover, but let’s face it, this way more creative than 90% of the ads you saw during the game.