Advertising is—bizarrely—one of the main highlights of the Super Bowl, and this year brought an exciting range of new movie trailers.
The unofficial theme of the night was CGI battle scenes, to the point where Disney even made The Jungle Book look like a gritty action movie. With that in mind, here’s what you missed if you didn’t tune in for the big game.
Jason Bourne
The long-awaited fifth Bourne movie (or fourth, if you’d prefer to forget The Bourne Legacy) is meant to be a post-Snowden thriller, but you wouldn’t know that from this teaser. Like most Super Bowl trailers, it’s full of explosions, meaningless dramatic dialogue, and very little plot.
Our favorite moment is when Bourne punches a man in the face and it makes a sound like two pieces of metal slamming together. So tough. So manly.
The Jungle Book
For some reason, Disney decided to film a gritty remake of the classic 1967 animated movie The Jungle Book. This version is sure to make money from nostalgic audiences, but the trailer still feels a little odd. There’s something uncanny about hearing familiar movie stars speak from the mouths of almost-realistic CGI animals.
X-Men: Apocalypse
Another classic Super Bowl trailer, doing its best to make the X-Men franchise look like Man of Steel or a Transformers movie. Watching this, you’d have no idea that X-Men: Apocalypse is actually set in the 1980s.
Captain America: Civil War
This new teaser ramped up the tension between the two warring teams of Marvel heroes, inviting viewers to pick a side with the #TeamCap and #TeamIronMan hashtags. The soundtrack is an ominous chant of “United we stand/Divided we fall”—playing into the whole sports thing, we suppose.
TMNT 2
There’s going to be another Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, because art is dead and life is meaningless. Enjoy your creepy, roided-up CGI turtles, everyone.
Gods of EgyptEven compared to the TMNT 2 trailer, Gods of Egypt was surely the worst of the Super Bowl bunch. With a clanging disregard for the Hollywood zeitgeist, Lionsgate decided to make a movie about Egyptian gods where most of the characters are played by white people. The presence of Gerard Butler makes us think they’re trying to capitalize on fond memories of 300, but all in all, Gods of Egypt looks like a real stinker.
Screengrab via Universal Pictures/YouTube
