The Super Bowl isn’t just the place for sports fans to feel some hometown pride or shame. Ever since Independence Day revamped this gaming event as a go-to space to promote major movies, studios have used the Big Game as a space to drop commercials for the biggest blockbusters of a given year. Throughout the years, The Avengers, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen have either ramped up or entirely kicked off their respective marketing campaigns with ads aired during the most-watched TV event of any year. Super Bowl LIX didn’t deliver any movie trailers that took pop culture by storm like the most famous Super Bowl movie ads nor were any as creative in editing and presentation as, say, that faux-medication ad Cure for Wellness dropped eight years ago.
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Still, there were quite a few Super Bowl movie trailers this year and ranking them worst to best indicates to the world the “proper” and “improper” way to promote a major upcoming blockbuster at this event. The Philadelphia Eagles weren’t the only Super Bowl LIX victors this year, as this ranking from worst to best of this year’s Super Bowl movie commercials makes apparent.
10) Smurfs
Props to the Smurfs Super Bowl commercial for using the casting of Rihanna as Smurfette as a reason to start this ad with a fake-out Halftime Show reference. Otherwise, this ad was Smurfin’ boring. It’s remarkable that this Smurfs reboot is retreading both the concept of sending the Smurfs to the “real world” and having these blue critters go to Paris from the previous two live-action Smurfs installments. Not even a final gag involving a Nick Offerman Smurf saying “guacamole” could salvage Super Bowl LIX’s worst movie commercial.
9) M3gan 2.0
As of this writing, it’s impossible to actually find a unique M3GAN 2.0 Super Bowl commercial online despite this ad apparently airing during the game. Reports of what it actually contained indicate it only minimally varied from the short dance-heavy teaser that debuted during the Grammy’s a week earlier. The lack of accessibility for this commercial and its derivative nature compared to the official M3GAN 2.0 teaser trailer make this one of the weakest Big Game trailers, no question.
8) F1
Dropping its first new footage since its teaser seven months ago, Brad Pitt’s F1’s Super Bowl commercial continued the movie’s marketing strategy of relying exclusively on largely dialogue-free footage of the famous actor behind the wheel of an F1 automobile. Such images were surely difficult to capture during principal photography, but like the teaser, F1’s Super Bowl ad didn’t have much unique personality of its own. The fast cars went zoom, but there wasn’t much else to make it stick around in your mind.
7) How to Train Your Dragon
The greatest strength of the How to Train Your Dragon Big Game spot was simply reminding viewers that John Powell’s Dragon score was nothing short of iconic. This franchise’s central theme is guaranteed to send your spirit soaring. How frustrating, then, to hear that music paired with footage from a live-action How to Train Your Dragon remake that looks so creatively discouraging. This commercial just made the project look even more like a shot-for-shot retread of the 2010 classic. Powell’s score and an adorable critter like Toothless deserve better than something that looks this artistically stagnant.
6) Novocaine
Jack Quaid’s Novocaine was the rare original film (along with F1) to show up at the Super Bowl. This commercial had some welcome flourishes, namely the consistently crisp editing that stuck around from depictions of the titular lead’s mundane life to footage of him fighting bad guys. Still, this Novocaine Super Bowl commercial highlighted several quippy lines from the film’s trailer that still aren’t very funny even in an abbreviated format.
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5) Jurassic World Rebirth
In a better year of Super Bowl movie commercials, the Jurassic World Rebirth Big Game ad (which was basically just a truncated version of the Rebirth teaser) wouldn’t have had a prayer of cracking the top five on this list. However, Rebirth at least had some dinosaurs chomping at people, which puts it above the F1 and Smurfs commercials. Despite those prehistoric beasties, Rebirth’s Super Bowl ad couldn’t erase the feeling that this looks like a super perfunctory return to this once-special world.
4) Captain America: Brave New World
A lengthy glimpse at Captain America: Brave New World heralded the imminent arrival of this new Marvel Cinematic Universe title. Most of the shots (namely the new glimpses of the Red Hulk and Captain America showdown) in here look perfectly fine. However, the commercial was held back from a higher ranking by a weird decision to have characters “pop out of the screen” by walking or moving outside of the borders of the film’s aspect ratio. This distracting gimmick is how you promote digital 3D movies in 2011, not more “grounded” superhero movies in 2025.
3) Lilo & Stitch
Like How to Train Your Dragon, the Lilo & Stitch remake looks disappointing on an artistic level. Props to the Disney marketing person, though, who decided that the film’s Super Bowl commercial should carry on the tradition of Stitch “invading” other Disney movies and pop culture properties. Having this new incarnation of Stitch create Super Bowl LIX chaos was a cute sight reaffirming the character’s destructive spirit.
2) Thunderbolts*
God only knows why the New York City depicted in every piece of Thunderbolts* marketing is so devoid of color and awash in grey slush. Otherwise, the Super Bowl trailer for Thunderbolts* was surprisingly delightful, particularly in how it showed the chemistry between performers like Florence Pugh and David Harbour could be something special. Bonus points for the inspired use of the Starship song “Nothing’s Gonne Stop Us Now” to underpin the whole ad.
1) Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
Mission: Impossible- The Final Reckoning’s Super Bowl commercial featured a visually exciting detail that many of the Big Game movie ads this year lacked. The commercial featured an aspect ratio that grew wider and wider as the trailer went on, thus allowing viewers to witness an increasing amount of spectacle the longer they stared at the screen. This flourish accentuated an escalating aura of excitement in The Final Reckoning’s Super Bowl commercial and offered something distinctly different from the structure of its striking teaser trailer.
