Wow, what a shitshow. Despite playing like absolute garbage, the Kansas City Chiefs are your Super Bowl LVIII champions, and Taylor Swift will remain atop the headlines and inescapable for at least another six months, at least until she ditches Travis Kelce and decides to go out with somebody like Clayton Kershaw so that she can make Opening Day down in Los Angeles. The best action of the entire night happened when Kelce got in Andy Reid’s face — it’s a pity we didn’t get a Godzilla x Kong: The New Order trailer because that social media marketing team could have made something of that — and we’re stunned that anybody would bet on the Kyle Shanahan 49ers, given that the guy is now 0-3 in Super Bowls where he was running the offense. At least Brock Purdy has new Minions content to watch once his parents upload it to his kid-proofed Kindle Fire. Vegas ate shit, which is perhaps the one funny outcome from the whole night.
But honestly — and we don’t say this a ton — the ads were actually pretty good this year. Crypto got totally frozen out (“pivoting to international markets” translates in tech-bro-speak to “we just can’t afford this shit anymore”), the established brands somehow managed to come up with actual jokes (M&Ms dunking on Dan Marino, Terrell Owens, and Scarlett Johannson was a solidly good ad), the less-established made some good choices (growing “couch potatoes” in the PlutoTV one was a highlight), and we also got an absolutely fucking bizarre campaign ad for Robert Kennedy Jr.’s longshot Presidential campaign (there’s at least five people out there who are now convinced that it’s some kind of ARG for a new Netflix show or something, as opposed to the MS Paint-styled remix of a JFK ad that some PAC paid millions to air). Oh, and Usher kicked ass, and fuck you if you disagree.
Anyhow, there were, as there are every year, trailers, and we got a good amount of them. To help you out with remembering exactly what aired — we know you like a few Bud Light Limes now and then — we’ve compiled a list ranking the trailers by hype level, from Jesus Christ turn the bad game back on all the way up to Please, stop the game and just let us watch this now.
Wicked
Look, we’re just gonna say it: This movie is somehow more terrifying than Return to Oz, a movie that fucked-up so many childhoods in the ’80s, whose consequences we’re still dealing with today. Cynthia Erivo is great, and it’s fantastic they got Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Yeoh to round out the cast, but Jesus Christ, just look at Ariana Grande. That is a choice, Jon M. Chu, as much as it is to pull a Dune and neglect to mention that this will be a two-film affair (the title should be Wicked: Part One – First Look on the video above), and we’re gonna be seeing a whole lot of it over the next two years. If there’s anything that captures how 90 percent of the nation felt when Mecole Hardman ran into the end zone, it’s most likely this trailer. And remember: 8 percent of those rooting for him had money on him as an Any Time Touchdown Scorer (we did), and 2 percent, we assume, were actual Chiefs fans.
IF
Not to be confused with either the horror film Imaginary or Lindsey Anderson’s 1969 classic, this is a John Krasinski original blockbuster, complete with Ryan Reynolds in one of the lead roles. And you know it’s gonna be good when they spend the first section of the little teaser making jokes with Randall Park instead of showing you anything about the movie, too. Out of all the Boy, this must have been fucking expensive for such little reward choices made at this year’s Super Bowl; we’re gonna rank this as similar to the experience of buying a hobby box of NFL cards and pulling a Kadarius Toney autograph.
Kung Fu Panda 4
This is less out of distaste and more just out of disinterest: The Kung Fu Panda movies are pretty solid family fare, and we’ve got to give Po and co. props for sticking with the TV Spot format instead of a teaser for a trailer. On the other hand, we can’t get the image of the little fellas going straight for Jack Black’s tits out of our head — what wacky, wacky imagery to have in the middle of a Super Bowl spot.
A Quiet Place: Day One
Yeah, we wrote about this last week, and hey, it looks fine. Lupita Nyong’o in a survival horror flick directed by the dude who did Pig? Sure, we’ll be there opening weekend. But we really can’t get over how disappointing it is that these weird creatures are just fucking aliens, dropping out of the sky like flaming pigeon shit, probably ruining the paint jobs on as many Manhattan cars in that hour-long process as the birds do every year. Actually, we’d pay to see Pigeon Survival Horror: Dawn of the Bread? Surely you could get some CW star to lead that one instead of handing Lupita the big bucks (because she deserves them, and you can’t afford her).
Despicable Me 4
We love to see Illumination leading with the Minions because let’s be real: nobody really gives a fuck about Gru and his kids or whatever. It’s even better when you’re having them make fun of the AI commercials that littered the evening — Chat GPT hallucinations are now that much funnier when you imagine the Minions being behind them or shitposting about how much they love a particular journalist. This will make a billion dollars, be perfectly alright for a Saturday afternoon family outing to the movies, and we will all forget about it in six weeks: the natural life cycle of an Illumination movie. And that’s a-okay.
The Fall Guy
Ryan Gosling having a good time? Emily Blunt with “alien hands?” Lots of goofy action and a decently charming attitude? Sure, we’re excited for this one. We’re just hoping it’s not stuffed to the gills with dumb celebrity cameos or anything like that, because boy howdy did that sink the fuck out of Bullet Train. But on the other hand, if Leitch had wanted to do that, he could have just stuck around and directed…
Deadpool and Wolverine
… which is a cameo-fest to end all cameo-fests. It’s amazing that, seven or so years after the Fox deal closed, it took them this long to do anything with the X-Men characters. We figured they’d have spammed mutants left and right after Endgame, but it seems putting together a cohesive cinematic universe — and incorporating aspects of another one that proved its value in the last few years of its existence (aside from the mainline X-Men movies) — is harder than it looks. But, hey, we’ve got a new Deadpool movie, which is trying to play coy with the fact that Wolverine’s in the fucking thing and in his yellow suit, despite everyone and their mother having seen those leaked photos from the set a full year ago. We’ll take it, though. It’ll be funny to watch Jackman and Reynolds play off of each other, at least.
Monkey Man
This action thriller from director Dev Patel and producer Jordan Peele has been described as an Indian John Wick, and based on what we’re seeing in this teaser, it seems like that’s a reasonable enough takeaway. But what were impressed by was how this managed to convey mood and rhythm in thirty seconds while not taking you off-broadcast to make you watch some bloated trailer when you could have been waiting to see if they’d cut to Taylor while the Chiefs were struggling. Simplicity in marketing is mysterious and beautiful, people: Learn from it!
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
Now we’re going from a proverbial Monkey Man to a literal group of apes. Wes Ball’s take on the far-future of the Caesarverse (that’s what we’re dubbing it, because Nu-Apes sounds weird) looks big and exciting — it’s nice that after two solid features of “Apes Together Strong,” we’re finally getting to the most human depiction of ape society yet, which is defined solely by partisan gridlock. It’s weird how often Zombie Fox forgets how much people love these movies, given that they have made cash hand-over-fist for the last decade to the surprise of few, and it’s exciting that we’re getting a new installment. Shout out to our boy Terry Notary, who is most likely doing mo-cap work for a lot of these characters again — you’re the best, dogg.
Twisters
Look, you knew this was gonna be number one. Glen Powell? A goofy premise about two tornados instead of one this time around? Honoring the memory of our man Bill Paxton? Yeah, we’re hyped as fuck for Twister to get the Top Gun: Maverick treatment. If our future is solely defined by retreads of past concepts, you really couldn’t do much better than just pilfering the walls of a Blockbuster circa ’97 for ideas. And we’re imagining that the whole reason execs went for this and Independence Day were those cool lenticular covers. Bring ’em back, please.