Every year, more than one hundred million Americans plop down on their couches to watch the Super Bowl. With such a large audience, this is a grand time for studios to show us their most exciting films. These commercials don’t come cheap, but they can be worth the price — a well-done commercial can have the whole country buzzing.

Here’s my ranking of where the eight trailers fell:

8. “A Quiet Place”

This film comes in last by pure virtue of the fact that its advertising campaign had already begun. Therefore, the commercial didn’t really incite enthusiasm towards the movie. It’s John Krasinski, Emily Blunt and their fictional family not talking. I knew all this before the game, and I know that now. However, it’s still a big move to put a commercial for this film during the game, so that is certainly a sign of confidence by the studio.

7. “Red Sparrow”

I’m still confused what this “Red Sparrow” movie will be about, and this trailer did very little to clear that up. However, the fact that there even was a commercial during the game grabs my attention and shows that this film is a major blockbuster. You can count on Jennifer Lawrence to give a great performance, so this is a film to look forward to despite being smaller-scale than others advertised during the game.

6. “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom”

I’m slotting this trailer at No. 6 simply because there was really nothing remarkable about it. Everyone loves the “Jurassic” franchise and is ready to see the latest installment, but as a trailer had already dropped for the film, there wasn’t too much new here to get excited about. With that said, it was a well put together trailer that gets me excited for the film.

5. “Mission: Impossible – Fallout”

Again, another well-made trailer, but also not reinventing the wheel. “Mission: Impossible” is a well-known franchise that is reliable during the summertime — you can expect to see Tom Cruise do some amazing stunts set to the backdrop of some silly spy plot. “Fallout” looks to be a worthy addition to the “Mission: Impossible” canon.

4. “Skyscraper”

This trailer is probably on equal terms with “Mission: Impossible.” However, I’m giving it the edge as it’s a new intellectual property and this is the first we’ve really seen of it. The Rock is at the peak of his popularity, especially after the overwhelming success of “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” and this looks to be an amazing vehicle for his goofy action charisma. This movie will be absolutely ridiculous, and I, for one, cannot wait.

3. “Avengers: Infinity War”

All right, so we’ve already seen a trailer for this movie, but this is where my personal bias has to shine through. “Avengers: Infinity War” is the culmination of what is essentially a 20-entry film series, so though we’ve seen some footage before, each piece of new footage is of vital importance. They showed enough to get us excited, but not enough to spoil anything or for us to get bored. It was an extremely well-made commercial that left me wanting more.

2. “Solo: A Star Wars Story”

This film is being released over Memorial Day Weekend, which might feel like a long time away now, but in the grand scope of things it’s right around the corner. Thus, it has been rather curious that there has been literally no press for “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” a major tentpole release.

However, it appears Disney is doing a short but intense media run, as there’s no bigger venue to make a splash than the Super Bowl. This was not even a trailer, but a trailer for a trailer that’s being released today, which is especially genius as you have all one hundred million viewers coming back for more. The footage we saw looked thrilling, and with such anticipation behind this film, it was nearly pitch-perfect execution.

1. “The Cloverfield Paradox”

While not necessarily remembered as a great movie, the original “Cloverfield” is remembered as one of the all-time greatest movie trailers. Well, over a decade later, we have what appears to be a similar situation.

The footage in “The Cloverfield Paradox” trailer might not have been the most exciting thing in the world, but the context of this trailer is particularly interesting. For one thing, this was the first footage shown from the film, which by itself is always exciting. Then, it was announced that the film would be on Netflix.

The big bomb drop, though, was that the film was set to premiere immediately after the game ended. So over the course of 30 seconds, most of America went from never hearing about the movie to having the ability to watch it in a matter of hours.

I would be interested to see the viewership for the film once it aired, but regardless, awareness of the film is probably at an all-time high for a Netflix original, creating one of the more unique film marketing ploys of our day. Apparently the movie isn’t great, but boy did it enter with a splash.

Erik Benjamin is a senior television, radio and film major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at ebenjami@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @cokezeriksugar.

Published on February 5, 2018 at 9:59 pm