Trailer Park: Super Bowl Edition!

The Super Bowl is the most watched television program in America each year, coming every year on the first Sunday in February. The 2011 edition drew 111 million viewers, the most for any single program in the nation’s history. As such, :30 ads on the during the game go for millions of dollars. While a few movies have always chosen to debut their trailers during the game, this year seemed to be the biggest year for movie commercials in recent memory. A full dozen spots are now up on Trailer Addict… I’ve included only a few of the most exciting. We saw the first real footage from the next Marvel movie, the next J.J. Abrams film, and the next Transformers flick, as well as Fox’s new show about people from the future fighting dinosaurs. Let’s get it started!

Captain America: The First Avenger

We saw the first footage from Marvel’s next film in a vague but cool-looking :30 second spot cooked up for the game. Here’s a transcript from the Super Bowl party I attended. “So who’s playing Captain American.” “Chris Evans.” “OK… who?” It actually looks pretty spot on visually, which is all that we can really tell at this point. Apparently they used Benjamin Button-type techniques to put Chris Evans’ head on a scrawny body for the Steve Rogers scenes, and you can’t really tell. There are brief glimpses here of the Red Skull, Dum Dum Dugan, and Union Jack. I personally am looking forward to the fact that the film was co-written by Joss Whedon, who said he had lots of fun writing “40s dialogue.” The film also stars Haley Atwell, Stanley Tucci, Tommy Lee Jones, and Hugo Weaving, and was directed by Joe Johnston, and is scheduled for a July 22 release.

Super 8

For a movie directed by J.J. Abrams and produced by Steven Spielberg, we know remarkably little about Super 8. Abrams directed a trailer to put before Iron Man 2 before even shooting the film, but this :30 Super Bowl spot is the first real footage we’ve seen. The film has been described as Abrams’ tribute to Spielberg, and is apparently about a mysterious alien in a small town in the 80s. The trailer tells us very little about the movie but still looks very cool. We do in fact see a brief glimpse of a Super 8 camera here, but I have a feeling that, like Cloverfield, this is a title specifically designed to not reveal plot details. But it sure looks like an Abrams movie… even the title cards in this trailer have lens flare! The cast lacks big names but includes Kyle Chandler, Elle Fanning, and Noah Emmerich. The film is slated for a June 10 release.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

I am far less excited about this film than the last two, but the trailer does include some fantastic images. Of course, in true Michael Bay style, the “money shot” at the end has way too many moving parts on screen at once and is completely incomprehensible. There does look like there there’s some impressive action and a great deal of destruction here. Shia LaBoeuf, Tyrese, and Josh Duhamel return, but Megan Fox was kicked off the franchise, replaced by Victoria’s Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley (seen here briefly). Other new cast members include Patrick Dempsey, Alan Tudyk, and John Malkovich. Transformers: Dark of the Moon will clean up at the box office starting July 1.

Cowboys & Aliens

While we have already received a full trailer for this Jon Favreau’s next film, the Super Bowl commercial contained almost completely different footage… and honestly to me was a little less exciting. Still, it’s going to be hard for this film to go wrong in my book. I mean, it’s aliens blowing up an old Western town, and Olivia Wilde without clothes on. I am for these things. Interestingly, all of this year’s Super Bowl trailers seemed to be very visual and lacked a real verbal punchline. There was a lot of “Run!” and “They’re coming back!” Anyway, Cowboys & Aliens also stars Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Sam Rockwell, and Paul Dano, and hits theaters July 29.

Terra Nova

Steven Spielberg had a big hand in the movies advertised on the Super Bowl, so it’s only fitting that he have a big hand in it’s biggest TV promo as well. Terra Nova apparently involves citizens of 2149 traveling 85 million years into the past to escape a broken future. When there they end up fighting dinosaurs. The series has drawn comparisons to Avatar and Lost… writer Brannon Braga says it’s “less science fictional” than Lost, despite the dinosaurs and the time travel. The two most prominent members of the cast are Stephen Lang (the evil drill sergeant in Avatar) and Jason O’Mara (from the US version of Life on Mars). It’s not completely clear yet when the series will begin to air, most likely sometime in late summer or fall. I’m happy that a show like this exists… here’s hoping it’s actually good!

Until next time, keep on arriving early!

About Dan

Dan Joslyn grew up in Ohio but now lives in Las Vegas, NV with his lovely ginger girlfriend, Tiarra, where he works as an office monkey. He enjoys reviewing movies and television for the site, and over-analyzing such things. He may be the Chosen One… but he probably isn’t.

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