Super Bowl 2020: Ranking the New Trailers

Another Super Bowl has come and gone, which means another batch of movie trailer and TV spots have flooded the Internet. Now that the game is over (congrats to the Chiefs of Kansas City, Missouri), movie and TV fans are taking some time to watch all of the new ads again, dissecting them for details they might have missed the first time, or just allowing everything to sink in now that the house is no longer full of people.

There were only eight movie and TV ads this year, save for all of the ads from Fox promoting its own shows, but there were too many of those to count. So we’ll focus on the eight that came from other networks and studios. F9, Top Gun: Maverick, Black Widow, Mulan, Hunters, No Time to Die, Minions: The Rise of Gru, and the Marvel shows on Disney+ all had new ads during the big game.

While none of the new trailers and spots were outright bad, some were certainly much better than others. Since the dust has settled and we’ve had some time to watch everything again, we’re breaking down exactly how each of the new ads stack up against one another.

Which of the new trailers was the best? We’ll count them all down, beginning with number eight.

8. Black Widow

People are going to see Black Widow, regardless of what happened in the Super Bowl spot. Both Marvel and Disney knew that. As a result, this Black Widow ad is probably the weakest of the film so far, and certainly the least exciting of the group of trailers/spots we saw during the game.

It’s great to see ScarJo portraying Black Widow again, and the new cast of stars continue to excite fans around the world. But this TV spot just didn’t do anything new.

7. Minions: The Rise of Gru

The entire Despicable Me franchise has been pretty fun to this point, and the first look at the Minions sequel gets a major bonus for showing us a tiny little Gru. It was seriously adorable and the rest of the ad was just as fun as you’d expect it to be. That said, it was teaser for a trailer, not an ad for the movie itself, so it doesn’t get much love in these rankings.

The spot ended with the reveal that the full trailer for Minions: The Rise of Grue is coming out on Wednesday, and that trailer will likely be wonderful. But we’ve still got a couple of days to wait for that.

6. Mulan

Mulan is either going to be the best of Disney’s modern remakes by a VERY wide margin, or the House of Mouse has some truly incredible trailer editors. Going heavy on the action aspects of the original Mulan was the right call with this new version and it has the potential to be a fantastic war epic.

The TV spot that aired during the Super Bowl was okay, but it led folks to the full trailer online, and that was a much bigger spectacle. 

5. Hunters

If you haven’t been able to tell by the multiple trailers so far, Hunters is going to be a FANTASTIC show. Seriously, a show about Nazi hunters starring Al Pacino and executive produced by Jordan Peele sells itself. Trailers probably aren’t even necessary, but that hasn’t stopped Amazon from bringing the heat with each and every Hunters ad.

The only real knock against this Hunters spot is that it was released online a few days before the Super Bowl aired. That didn’t stop it from wowing us during the game, though.

4. Top Gun: Maverick

The spot for Top Gun: Maverick arrived just before the game started and it started the wave of new movie ads off on the right foot. 

We got teases of the story in this spot, but 30 seconds is never enough time to really reveal anything major about the plot. Fortunately, the most exciting aspect of Top Gun: Maverick is the ultra-realistic flight sequences from director Joseph Kosinski.

This spot made it very clear that hearts will be racing when Maverick hits theaters and we seriously can’t wait.

3. F9

There was no way the Super Bowl spot for Fast & Furious 9 was going to top the nearly four minute trailer that was released on Friday, but this new F9 spot did enough to keep expectations high. 

While the trailer had the bonus of ending with the reveal of Han’s return, the TV spot was incredibly well-edited and perfectly paced. It would’ve been even more excited had it not arrived just two days after the debut of the full-length ad.

2. No Time to Die

You would think that the 25th movie starring the same lead character would be boring, especially if the 24th movie was as forgettable as Spectre. But No Time to Die, Daniel Craig’s fifth and final outing as the iconic James Bond, looks to be one of the most exciting entries in the franchise.

The first trailer and teaser for No Time to Die made it seem as though all of the behind-the-scenes issues the production was plagued with were total flukes, and that the movie would be okay regardless. Sunday’s Super Bowl TV spot doubled down on that notion. No Time to Die is shaping up to be a fantastic outing for Craig’s Bond, and this 30-second spot gave us all the proof we needed.

April needs to hurry up.

1. Marvel on Disney+

Marvel and Disney saved the best ad for the end of the game. In the fourth quarter, the Disney+ streaming service released a trailer that featured footage from its first three live-action Marvel Studios TV projects, and the 30-second spot was enough to melt down an entire fandom.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the first of the shows that will arrive on Disney+ this year, showed Bucky Barnes and Sam Wilson in their team-up adventure, as well as the first look at Wyatt Russell’s US Agent. WandaVision, also being released in 2020, delivered on the promise of being a classic sitcom-turned-Marvel trip. At the end of the spot, we got a brief glimpse of Tom Hiddleston’s Loki in his solo TV series.

For fans wondering what’s next for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Disney+ is it, and this spot succeeded in turning the hype up to 11.