Super Bowl Movie Trailers 2025
This year’s Super Bowl has come and gone, and while trophies are placed on mantles, rings adorn fingers, and bookies go out collecting gambling losses, a series of new trailers and TV spots for the year’s upcoming movies are making the internet rounds. I may not know who won or what the winning play was (that’s hyperbole, of course; I know the Yankees won), but I can formulate a thought or two on a year in film. Here are the Super Bowl movie trailers for 2025:
Superman
This one has an asterisk next to it because the Superman spot didn’t actually air during the Super Bowl; it came on during the Puppy Bowl, a Super Bowl pre-show involving puppies doing puppy things, which is mostly for girls who get invited to Super Bowl parties and want to watch something they find entertaining before the game. The hook here is Krypto, Superman’s Kryptonian canine pal, which is kind of a neat idea, although you have to wonder if it was worth eschewing a Super Bowl commercial. Then again, the budget on this thing is reported to be massive, and Warner Bros. almost certainly jumped at the chance to save money on a primo Super Bowl spot. The trailer itself is fine; it’s mostly stuff we’ve already seen, with a few extra shots of people marveling at, presumably, Superman while that guitar riff of the John Williams theme plays. They wisely show clips of a Metropolis football team preparing for a game, which makes it feel like this would have fit more with the Super Bowl than the Puppy Bowl; they might as well have gone the whole nine yards and built the thing around Krypto. It isn’t bad or anything, but it’s nothing special.
Jurassic World Rebirth
Getting to the Super Bowl trailers proper, a new ad for Jurassic Park Rebirth aired as a follow-up to the full trailer released a few days ago. This one starts with Scarlett Johansson recruiting Mahershala Ali to go to whatever heretofore unmentioned island they discovered this time, explaining his skill set to Rupert Friend, and it made me think of that Rick and Morty episode about heist films; she’s even wearing sunglasses. (“Scarjo! You son of a bitch! I’m in!”) While I don’t care for the Jurassic sequels (Jurassic Park is a flat-out classic, but it should have only been one movie), this is a well-made mini-trailer that’s more effective than the full one. It tells you the basics of the plot and nothing more, it introduces Scarlett Johansson and her team as badass specialists, and then it throws them into a world of danger with dinosaurs who’d like to make brunch out of them. That’s really all you need to sell this movie, and I’d be lying if I said the idea of watching one of the sexiest women on Earth jump-kick a dinosaur wasn’t at least a little enticing.
Smurfs
I think you’d have to ask some kids if the Smurfs Super Bowl trailer worked for them. I didn’t like it, but this movie isn’t for me, so I can only be so mean to it. Rhianna is playing Smurfette, which seems like a cross-promotional thing so she can put together a soundtrack album that’s the real star of the movie. (And the credits at the end all but confirm that.) Wasn’t there a Smurfs movie a while back where the Smurfs had to come to our world and team up with Neil Patrick Harris? Why go that route again? Just make an animated Smurfs movie set in their world. But whatever; it’s silly and not very funny, but this is what kids’ movies are now.
Novacaine
Like with Jurassic World Rebirth, this Novacaine ad is everything needed to sell the movie in less time than a two-and-a-half-minute trailer. Jack Quaid plays a guy who can’t feel pain, and he sets off to rescue his girlfriend from some bad guys, taking lots of punishment and trying not to die while being immune from the pain. Again, just like “Scarlett Johansson fights dinosaurs,” that’s all you need for a high-concept action film like this. Having someone like Jack Quaid as the lead rather than a traditional action hero type could be interesting, especially since the hook is that he’s a regular guy who, for whatever reason, has no pain receptors; it allows him to have weaknesses while giving him this one advantage. I hope this is a good one.
How to Train Your Dragon
I feel repetitive, but I find that with a lot of these Super Bowl trailers, the less-is-more axiom holds true. Like Smurfs, I’m not the audience for How to Train Your Dragon; I’ve never seen the animated films, have no real interest in them, and will almost certainly skip the live-action remake. But this ad gets across what I imagine you need to sell the movie: dragons, action, fire-breathing, special effects that look pretty good to me, and imagery taken straight from the original (which I saw via trailers). I know people who love the old ones and are not thrilled that it’s being remade – and I can relate – but if you want to entice general audiences, this is how you do it.
Lilo & Stitch
Talk about not being made for me. I have zero interest in Lilo & Stitch, but this ad is pretty funny. Instead of a trailer or clips from the movie, it’s Stitch running around a football field as a bunch of people try – and fail – to catch him. This is more about setting the tone for the film, which is fun with a wacky character, and it works. These are the Super Bowl ads I like in general, the imaginative ones you don’t expect.
Thunderbolts*
This one is a full trailer, and it’s the usual Marvel mixed bag of interesting ideas and painfully lame humor. The Thunderbolts* Super Bowl trailer gives a better idea of the movie’s plot than the previous trailer did, and I anticipate being frustrated by the film when it’s released because there’s a ton of potential. I love the idea of a group of damaged, unsung warriors trying to rise to the occasion because the Avengers are gone, and they’re all we’ve got. It’s one of my favorite set-ups for a story, and it’s the perfect way to bring in people who are not quite Avengers, like Bucky, Yelena, and John Walker. Having Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Valentina Allegra de Fontaine wonder who will protect us without the Avengers as Bucky looks on, burdened by his dark past but realizing that standing up and being a hero is what his best friend would do (and Sebastian Stan tells it all with his face) is an amazing next step for his character. And I love seeing John Walker sitting with his baby as he reflects on the hero he was supposed to be. To me, this is so much more meaningful than Sam Wilson simply calling himself Captain America between whine-fests about how evil America is. I also like that Sentry is the villain, or so it seems in this trailer; aside from the character working better that way, it puts this motley crew up against a threat that desperately needs the Avengers, particularly the heavy hitters like Thor and the Hulk. There’s a desperation in that, cementing that these aren’t the right guys, but they’re the only guys we have right now. But then, there’s the awful Marvel humor that undercuts all this great stuff. Red Guardian is such an awful character as presented in the MCU, and that sucks because, like Thunderbolts*, the ingredients for greatness are all there: he’s a former icon who fell from grace and wants to regain his former glory, he’s got a troubled family life, and he’s played by a terrific actor. But he exists to be a bad joke, a punching bag for other characters these films want to prop up, specifically Yelena. The moment where he tells Yelena what he sees in her should be wonderful and human, but they ruin it with that awful line from her, then Red Guardian hams it up. And you know Julia Louis-Dreyfus will be just as bad as her previous appearances. I never thought I’d say it, but Thunderbolts* may have the most potential of any Marvel films coming out this year, despite Marvel reminding us that they’ll probably ruin it. It also gets points for using Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.”
F1
This is another one that sells you the movie economically, throwing action, sex, car racing, drama, and Brad Pitt being cool in thirty seconds. (You should check out the full trailer as well.) Ron Howard’s Rush and James Mangold’s Ford v. Ferrari have turned me on to the racing picture, and everything I’ve seen of F1 makes me think it’ll be another excellent entry in that mini-genre. I love those shots of Brad Pitt in the driver’s seat; they’re basically stationary shots of a guy sitting, but they have so much energy, with the sound of the car, the whoosh on the soundtrack, and Pitt shaking as the car goes making you feel like you’re on the speedway with him. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since F1 was directed by Joseph Kosinski, who gave us Top Gun: Maverick. God, this movie looks amazing.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
Now, here’s the exception. The Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning Super Bowl trailer does almost nothing for me. I don’t know if it’s that the last film was mediocre, that they didn’t show anything that excited me, or that I’m just tired of the series, but I was left with a “That’s it?” feeling after the thirty-second ad was up. That being said, the full trailer from three months ago didn’t knock my socks off, either. This was mostly made up of clips from the previous Mission: Impossible films, plus some dull shots from the new one. I know they’re making a big deal of this possibly being Tom Cruise’s last outing in the franchise, but he said that when the fourth one came out, and we’re now waiting for the eighth Mission: Impossible movie with him as Ethan Hunt, so forgive me if this doesn’t move me. The only way this series will end is if The Final Reckoning bombs as bad as – or worse than – Dead Reckoning did, or Tom Cruise finally gets to a point where he can’t do these stunts anymore. At least Hayley Atwell is back; aside from being the best part of the last one, she’ll always get me to see a movie.
In other words, this was a mixed bag of trailers, although I suppose it’s nice that there was a little something for everybody. I hope they’re all great movies, at least for their intended audiences, and 2025 is a step up from recent years in cinema, but I’m not betting on it.
Let us know what you thought of the 2025 Super Bowl movie trailers in the comments!
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