Aside from all that football and all that Justin Timberlake, this year’s Super Bowl also brought with it a stack of new trailers teasing some of the year’s biggest films and shows.
Here’s a look back at what Hollywood dropped:
Solo: A Star Wars Story
A troubled production (the original directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were removed late in the game and replaced with Ron Howard) has meant that the publicity machine for the Han Solo origin adventure has started up at a rather late stage. But this first, impressive spot suggests that we might have been worrying for nothing. The full trailer will be released tomorrow but this tease gives us a brief look at the stellar cast, including Woody Harrelson and Donald Glover, and some splashy action.
Skyscraper
Can someone go check on Dwayne Johnson? Is he eating all right, sleeping all right, gym-ing all right? The mega-star is coming off a schedule that has him top-lining three major movies in the space of seven months, making him a completely justified candidate for the oft-used celebrity affliction of “exhaustion”. The third (after Jumanji 2 and April’s video game-inspired actioner Rampage) is the oddly dated-looking Skyscraper, a film that would have starred Arnie or Sly back in the late 80s. That final stunt does look like quite the doozy though. Tom Cruise will be furious.
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan
Once Transparent broke out and became an awards darling, Amazon focused its attention on other critic-courting comedy dramas from I Love Dick to Mozart in the Jungle to Crisis in Six Scenes. But while Netflix was managing to launch genuine blockbusters like Stranger Things and the Marvel shows, Amazon’s restrictive focus meant that it lagged behind. This summer, Amazon is making an unashamed bid for the mass market with Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, a small-screen take on the character we’ve seen played by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck and Chris Pine. The latest spot sees Ryan, now played by John Krasinski, channeling 24’s Jack Bauer in a frantic globe-trot peppered with explosions and lots and lots and lots of running. Could this be the hit that Amazon so desperately needs? We’ll find out in August or given that it won’t release viewing figures, maybe we’ll never know ...
Mission: Impossible – Fallout
After his failed Dark Universe non-starter The Mummy, Tom Cruise is feeling the need, the need for the Mission: Impossible franchise to return like never before. The series continues to be a reliable money-maker (the most recent entry brought in $682m worldwide) and for the sixth instalment, Cruise is hoping his high-octane showing off will at least temporarily catapult him back to the top. The first trailer looks like more of the same, with some new recruits (hello, Angela Bassett and Henry Cavill) but the final stunt, typically what sells each film, doesn’t look quite as incredible as in previous attempts. But maybe they’re saving it for later sneak peeks. Just saying that the Rock’s Skyscraper antics are winning at the moment.
Castle Rock
Not that any of us can accurately remember a time when Stephen King adaptations weren’t toppling over one another to scare us first but the best-selling nightmare-giver is currently more in favor than ever. After the $700m success of It, King has teamed up with Hulu and JJ Abrams for Castle Rock, a new series which intertwines many of his stories and characters. The second teaser shows off the nifty cast, including Moonlight’s Andre Holland, Don’t Breathe’s Jane Levy, Melanie Lynskey and the King returnees Sissy Spacek and It’s Bill Skarsgård, and it gives us subtle teases of the spookiness to come as well as early clues of which familiar tales we might see later on (oh hey, Shawshank).
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
After the first trailer teased bigger dino action than ever before, this flashy new Super Bowl spot gives us a more horror-based look at the summer sequel. Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard are returning along with an island full of unwanted beasts and for those who worried the last preview focused on just the bigger action scenes, this one has some of the more intimate creepy sequences that made the original film so successful. The new spot also teases a new dinosaur created by scientists that looks rather nasty and also incredibly hateful of children.
The Cloverfield Paradox
One of the biggest shocks of the night came from Netflix, which used a spot to announce not only that they have the third Netflix movie but that it would premiere directly after the game. It’s an audacious move, given that not a single image of the film had even been released prior, and the trailer also confirms that it will link back to the 2008 original. Next year it will take quite the stunt to top this.
Red Sparrow
Coming off the back of the divisive Darren Aronofsky horror/comedy/drama/satire/experiment Mother!, Jennifer Lawrence is shifting gears yet again for this spy thriller from her Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence. Trailers have previously shown off her surprisingly effective Russian accent and what looks to be a dark, sexual tone and tonight’s new spot doesn’t add a whole lot more but suggests another unusual role for Lawrence.
Westworld
One of the most feverishly anticipated return seasons of 2018, the second chapter of Westworld carries with it a bucketload of expectation and is of huge importance for HBO, which hopes this will take over from Game of Thrones when it ends in 2019. There’s not a lot being given away here, which is probably for the best (the show benefits from secrecy), but it looks as stylish and fascinatingly twisty as ever.
The Avengers: Infinity War
One of the night’s most anticipated trailers offered up a look at the overdose of superheroes that will be teaming up in the next Avengers movie. Black Panther! Doctor Strange! Spider-Man! The Guardians lot! It’s a dream for anyone who thought that Captain America: Civil War could have done with a few more major Marvel characters. For everyone else, well, it might prove a bit of a headache.
A Quiet Place
The night also saw a new look at the John Krasinski-directed horror film that stars himself and his off-screen wife, Emily Blunt, as a couple protecting their kids from monsters that use sound to attack. Like the first, longer trailer, this suggests great things with a creepy gimmick that could make this a hugely unsettling watch. The film will kick off the SXSW festival next month.