A Hideous Brood of New SF Trailers Chews Its Way Out Through the Corpse of Another Super Bowl

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Another year, another Super Bowl not watched. I know lots of nerds are actually into watching the Super Bowl. I could never get behind watching a game I don’t play, played by people with whom I don’t have very much in common. I suppose there are passionate regional loyalties in play, plus genuinely interesting strategic calculations. That must be why there are all those sub-menus in Madden.

It matters little. What I do watch, after the fact, is all the expensive SF movie trailers that get aired during the Super Bowl. A rundown is below. (By the way, my colleague James Poniewozik has heroically reviewed all the ads that ran during the Super Bowl, including the trailers. I’m just re-reviewing them here. Because that’s what we’re about here at Time: massive redundancy.)

In no particular order:

1. Angels and Demons. The Da Vinci Code prequel. I can’t tell if this is SF or not — it looks like a remake of Hudson Hawk. Which by the way is a seriously underrated movie. David Caruso in silver body paint.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9TnRZ5_a9E&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

Yeah. Next!

2. Year One. Speaking of remakes: it’s Life of Brian Two: Revenge of Biggus Dickus! Except I can’t make fun of this, because I laughed at Michael Cera’s sword gag. Though at the same time I got that horrible feeling that maybe I’d just seen the one funny line in the whole movie. But still: I laughed.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOYBMWsWrZs&hl=en&fs=1]

3. Land of the Lost. What’s wrong with me? I laughed at this too. I’m sure I’ll laugh again five years from now when I watch it high on Ambien during a long-haul flight to Australia. Looks like they saved money by shooting it on the same backlot as Year One. I really hope they spent some of that extra money to license Nerf Herder’s excellent “She’s a Sleestak.” Ich darf nicht essen … die toten Katzen …

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqD9Pfc2ILs&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

3. Star Trek. Nothing much new here. Well, there is, actually — io9 has the breakdown of exactly what new footage this ad contains, because they don’t just work harder than me, they work smarter.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1D5UAcxHVZA&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

4. Up. Pixar’s so confident you’ll go see Up, they don’t even need to show you any new footage, except for that GPS gag at the end. At this point I would say that I doubt anybody’s going to go see a movie about a crusty old man, but then again I said they wouldn’t see a movie about a cute robot. And now look. (In other animated kids’ movie news, I finally sat all the way through My Neighbor Totoro yesterday, with my daughter. It really is the greatest movie ever.)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM7lP63x8Og&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

5. Monsters vs. Aliens. A couple of months ago I went to a demo/lecture by Jeffrey Katzenberg in which I tried out the new 3D technology they’re using for Monsters vs. Aliens. Which was, truly, incrementally better than other 3D technologies that have come before it. We saw a scene in which the president attempts to communicate with an alien spaceship 2001-style, using a Casio keyboard. He starts with the theme from 2001, which then segues into “Axel F,” to which the president break-dances. It was funny! For old people.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6PsSPQNOmw&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

6. Race to Witch Mountain. I remember watching this movie in Room 8, the movie room in my elementary school. I’m not sure I enjoyed it that much even then. Though they seem to have the right spirit, and I always find the Rock somehow … touching. And I rarely get tired of watching SUVs smash into invulnerable, immovable children, even if that gag was swiped from the train crash in Hancock. Fortunately I won’t have to sit through the whole thing, since I’m way too old for this movie, and my daughter’s a smidge too young.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfsnejFBSxc&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

7. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. What’s the rule of thumb for sequels? 30% more CGI, 30% less at the box office? Which given Moore’s law still translates to profit. They seem to have successfully carried forward the core mechanic of Transformers: robots, turning into cars, while moving forward rapidly. I can’t wait for the moment when Witwicky discovers that he himself is a robot, and that his whole life has been a sham, whereupon he goes mad, transforms into a Volkswagen Jetta, and drives off a cliff into the Grand Canyon, exploding before he hits the ground.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLhekcU3lng&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

p.s. I saw a Watchmen screening on Friday. Can’t talk about it yet though.