The day after the Super Bowl is filled with reflection. People share their favorite commercials and talk about highlights from the game itself. In this post, though, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on the movie trailers that aired for the Super Bowl. I referenced an article in my previous Word on the Street story that focused on movie studios trying to save money on game day advertising by choosing to show their trailers before or after the actual event. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to watch the Super Bowl, as I was working on a non-blog related project that took up a lot of my time. But I did record the pregame, postgame, and the game itself on my DVR so I could watch the trailers and write about my thoughts on them. While watching each trailer, I kept reflecting on the aforementioned article from my Word on the Street story last week. Out of all eleven trailers that aired for Super Bowl, more of them were shown during the game than before or after it. While there were five trailers shown during the pregame, none were shown during the postgame. Also, almost all of the trailers belonged to films that have already started their marketing campaigns.

Pregame

During the Super Bowl pregame, five movie trailers aired between interviews, performances, and early predictions. Two of them were Sonic the Hedgehog and The Invisible Man. It makes sense that they appeared during this segment because both films have a February release date. With Sonic the Hedgehog, the marketing team had a good idea with having athletes introduce Sonic. The second half of the trailer featured clips from the movie. I thought the visuals looked really good, especially Sonic’s redesign! Even though I think this trailer could have tailored to better reflect the Super Bowl event (having former Super Bowl champions introduce Sonic as one example), it was a well-crafted commercial. When it comes to visuals, The Invisible Man’s trailer provided a good balance between the colors of black and white. Most horror movies adopt a darker palette for their collection of marketing material. Seeing lighter hues in the trailer for The Invisible Man was an interesting choice. Personally, I’m not interested in seeing this film. However, it did present the synopsis in a simple way through visuals.

Another horror trailer that appeared during the pregame is A Quiet Place Part II. I was not a fan of this trailer for a few reasons. While I haven’t seen A Quiet Place, I’m aware of what the story is about. Audio could be heard in this commercial and all the characters were talking. This defeats the purpose of the title as well as the events of the first film. The monsters are also shown in at least two shots. Despite having good cinematography, I found this trailer to be the worst one to appear during the Super Bowl festivities. The Spongebob Movie: Sponge on the Run was, surprisingly, the best trailer from this collection. Their self-awareness for their pregame placement and for the cost of Super Bowl ads added humor to the trailer. They also did a great job explaining what the film was about through a series of visuals. Top Gun: Maverick is another trailer that had good visuals, this time due to cinematography. Having voice-overs over the clips was an interesting choice, even though I would have had the theme music playing over clips and text. I wish this trailer had been presented during the game, especially since Walmart referenced Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure in their commercial.

Game

Like I mentioned in the introduction, most of the films presenting trailers during the Super Bowl festivities had already started their marketing campaigns. The only movie that didn’t was Minions: The Rise of Gru. In this trailer, the marketing team tried to do what The Spongebob Movie: Sponge on the Run did with their trailer. However, they ended up showing random scenes with little context. At the end of this trailer, the words, “Trailer Wednesday” appeared on the screen. Why wouldn’t the marketing team make their Super Bowl ad the official trailer? To me, this commercial wasn’t utilized as well as it could have. Two other trailers I didn’t like were the ones for Mulan and the 25^th James Bond film, No Time to Die. The biggest flaw of both trailers is how choppy the editing is. This made it difficult for me to see the various featured clips. I was also confused when the words “The 25th Bond will change everything” were presented in the trailer. If this is Daniel Craig’s last time portraying James Bond, why wouldn’t the marketing team capitalize on that piece of information? Both trailers do have another thing in common: they didn’t make me excited for their respective films.

One similarity I noticed among these trailers were how they felt shorter than expected. Fast & Furious 9’s trailer is a good example. Because of its time length, there was no context provided as to what the story could be about. It also brought up more questions than it was willing to answer. Why is Han in one of the clips? Will the story revolve around the Olympics? Despite not receiving its own trailer, Wonder Woman 1984 made a surprise appearance during the game. The brief marketing for the film served as a collaboration with Tide’s Pod commercial that emphasized waiting until later when taking care of dirty clothes. This makes me wonder if Wonder Woman’s image will be featured on Tide products closer to the film’s release date? Another female superhero that has an upcoming movie is the MCU’s Black Widow. Her solo movie also had a trailer during the game. The best part of it was the collection of visuals, as they were captured very well through good cinematography. Similar to Top Gun: Maverick’s trailer, voice-overs were relied on to create the commercial’s tone. Black Widow’s trailer was one of the better pieces of movie marketing that was featured during the game.

Have you seen any of the Super Bowl movie trailers? If so, which one was your favorite? Tell me in the comment section!

Have fun at the movies!

Sally Silverscreen