Super Bowl 50 Movie Ads Round-Up!

The snacks are eaten. The Bronco's won it all. And boy howdy were there a bunch of ads for movies. Some were awesome blossoms, while others were more lacking in their blossoming awesomeness. Let's examine them all, shall we?



First up, the most anticipated movie about Gerard Butler controlling CGI beetles and snake monsters.....

Gods Of Egypt
Lionsgate chose to air an ad for their soon to be released fantasy action feature Gods of Egypt during the pre-game instead of the Super Bowl, and deciding to compensate for the more low-key venue by making the ad a minute long. While the more streamlined version of the plot presented in this advertisement is easier to digest by a country mile (it's all there in the "God vs. God" tagline, isn't it?), this still looks like a mess, full of CGI monsters, whitewashed casting and dullness. Not exactly a shocker that Lionsgate forgoed airing this one during the big game, since there's no doubt it would have been swallowed whole by the likes of Bourne and Captain America.

Deadpool
There are only four days to go (well, technically three, since there are Thursday night screenings, one of which I'm attending) until Deadpool comes to America, and 20th Century Fox used the Super Bowl as a chance to remind over a hundred million viewers that the film was well on the way with some football related dialogue from the titular hero and a fun line at the end with our hero referencing the impending release of the movie. Pretty fun stuff, though I wish they could have squeezed in X Gon Give It To Ya one last time.

Captain America: Civil War
At this point, the folks behind the marketing for these Marvel Cinematic Universe films could make a compelling Super Bowl TV spot for one of their films in their sleep, considering their experience making big game ads for the likes of The Avengers, the first Thor and Captain America films, Iron Man 3 and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. This one shows off a bunch of new footage, including new glimpses at the dueling team line-ups (check out Ant-Mans cool new outfit) and allows the chanters from The Dark Knight Rises trailers a new job bellowing out "UNITED. WE. STAND. DIVIDED. WE. FALL". Chalk this one up as another MCU Super Bowl ad win, if only for that awesome Iron Man watch bit.

10 Cloverfield Lane
Perhaps the most surprising advertisement of this game was this ad for the surprise Cloverfield follow-up, which managed to somehow get people even more hyped up about this project by having the 30 second spot close with the roar of a monster. Even separated from its connections to its predecessor, this looks like it could be a really unique movie, and John Goodman just gets more and more unsettling in his performance the more footage I see of him in this movie.

The Jungle Book

The ad for this one was bizarre, attempting to emulate 3D by having the characters "pop out" of the widescreen aspect ratio, but the effect just came across awkward in execution. In addition to a conventional 30 second commercial, a new trailer went out last night for this one on Twitter, and while the tonal shifts at certain spots came across as clunky to me, I must say I'm mighty interested in seeing how The Jungle Book turns out in its final feature film form. I;m particularly fond of the voice actors like Ben Kingsley and Christopher Walken, who seem perfect for playing iconic characters like Bagheera and King Louie, respectively.
Jason Bourne
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBZbaowA_ls Boy, this looks like an odd way to take a sequel to We Bought A Zoo, huh?

Easy Matt Damon jokes aside, this was easily the big debut of the entire game, with this being the first time footage from the first Matt Damon lead Bourne film in nearly a decade was shown to the general public. Not too many concrete story details were revealed (and I doubt a full trailer, which will doubtlessly come out sometime this week), but it looks like Bourne is using his newly recovered memory to take down bad guys and knock people out with one punch. OK, I'm onboard, especially since Tommy Lee Jones is in this installment.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows

In an effort to persuade diehard Ninja Turtles fans to give this new movie a chance after the last movie in the franchise (which could be best described as a forgettable and convoluted feature), the TMNT 2 ads have been pumping up the presence of fan favorite bad guys that are coming to the big screen for the first time. Notably, this means extra-terrestrial foe, Krang, got to be shown off in this ad, complete with his human/robot body. Not being a big or even moderate TMNT fan, the presence of Krang only garnered a "huh" from me, and the rest of the ad was just a blur of noise and Beastie Boys music. Ho-hum.

Independence Day: Resurgence
In his best movies (Independence Day, White House Down, 2012), Roland Emmerich can be counted on for plenty of gusto imagery, and Independence Day: Resurgence brought such visual to its Super Bowl ad, which was like Emmerich planting a big ass flag in the ground, ripping off his shirt, pounding his chest and shouting to the heavens "COME AT ME ZACK SNYDER!!". Point being, there are a lot of things blowing up in a cool fashion, complete with Jeff Goldblum intoning obvious facts about gravity.

X-Men: Apocalypse
This isn't exactly a bad advertisement, but X-Men: Apocalypse really needed to come into this game with a 30 second trailer that had all of its guns a-blazing, not a brief montage of footage that had its gun stuck in safety. Again, not bad stuff per se, but just felt more than a tad generic compared to the emotionally driven chaos of Captain America: Civil War ad and the "Hail the conquering hero" vibe from the Jason Bourne commercial. Another thing to note; there is a major emphasis on Jennifer Lawrence in this ad, to the point that I don't think James McAvoy as Xavier is ever seen in this ad.
The Secret Life Of Pets

A brief commercial for The Secret Life Of Pets aired in I believe the last commercial break of the game. Only a smattering of new footage to be found here, though that rock n' roll poodle is still popping up.

Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates
This technically didn't appear at the Super bowl, but the trailer for Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates did debut on James Cordens talk show that came on only a mere few hours after the Super Bowl, so let's examine this one real briefly. I didn't find many of the gags in this trailer to be that humorous, though I am pleasantly surprised to see Aubrey Plaza and Anna Kendrick do apparently play a very active role in the plot.

Finally, while The Angry Birds Movie (like all other Sony/Columbia movies) did not have an ad during the Super Bowl this year, its Facebook page did put out two Super Bowl themed images that are...well, see em for yourself.

Here's the first one, which implies that the protagonist of a kids movie skinned one of the bad guys and used that skin for sports equipment:

And then there's this one, which proves that even Angry Birds get a little kinky after their team wins the Super Bowl.