I’m not much of a sports fan, but I remember when the Super Bowl was something I looked forward to watching. Before YouTube became the go-to place for movie trailers, and even before movie trailers were widely available online whatsoever, for fans of movies the place to go to see previews for upcoming summer flicks was the Super Bowl.
The last year I remember being really excited about the movie trailers on the Super Bowl was 20 years ago back in 1999 when everyone was fearing Y2K. That was the year that the first Star Wars movie in more than a decade was set to be released and I remember hoping that at some point during the game we’d get a glimpse of something new. But that didn’t happen, until recently Star Wars never advertised on the Super Bowl. However, we did get a funny spoof of a Star Wars trailer with a commercial for Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me that fooled a lot of people, myself included.
That year the movie I came away from the Super Bowl excited about the most was… wait for it… of all things, The Mummy. This action-packed trailer made that film look like a lot of fun, and after the commercial I couldn’t wait for summer. It was a movie that I started following because of the Super Bowl and ended up seeing opening weekend. And honestly, I still kind’a dig The Mummy. It’s not the best movie ever, but I think watching it is still a good time.
Looking at the list of other commercials for movies that aired during the Super Bowl there was one for The Matrix that I don’t remember specifically but I think it was already getting a lot of positive buzz. It would go onto become one of the most successful movies of 1999 and would generate two sequels. I know I ended up seeing The Matrix opening weekend along with a lot of other people.
I remember too in 1999 the movie everyone thought was going to be a sure-fire hit of the summer was Wild Wild West starring Will Smith that had a spot on the Super Bowl. At that point Smith had broken out of being typecast as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and was king of the summer movies coming off a string of gigantic hits like Independence Day and Men in Black. And while Wild Wild West did make money at the box office, it by no means was a hit and today is considered mostly as a cautionary tale about producers wanting giant spiders in their films.
But after 1999 movie previews on the Super Bowl became a bit superfluous in that became so easy to see the trailers online there was really no reason to sit through the game to see them. And today when a movie trailer appears on the Super Bowl within minutes it’ll either be officially available on YouTube or a fan will have posted it there themselves, so these days watching the game is more of a tradition than getting anything of pop-culture value for it.
That being said, I do end up watching the Super Bowl every year, or at least most of it. There’s always some new movie preview that debuts there and I dig the excitement and anticipation of waiting to see what might show up next.
Almost a melding of an Indiana Jones style movie crossed with horror movie, The Mummy starred Brendan Fraser as Rick O’Connell and Rachel Weisz as Evie Carnahan. Rick’s an adventurer who talks with his fists and when his fists are busy substitutes chatting with two blazing pistols. Evie is a scholar who needs Rick to take her to a hidden tomb where they accidentally release an ancient mummy that unleashes its ancient curse on Egypt.
Starring Tom Cruise as Tyler Colt, this The Mummy takes place modern day with a female mummy (Sofia Boutella) accidentally being awakened by Colt and seeking vengeance on our world for what was done to her in ancient times. And, much with like the 1999 The Mummy, the 2017 The Mummy looks to be more like an action-adventure flick than something meant to make the kiddies wet the bed.
Today, Alien 3 is considered by the fans to be a noble failure. That movie was directed by David Fincher before he was David Fincher, so it’s got all the visual stylings we would come to expect from the director, but something about the movie is off. Alien 3 kind’a tries to return the Alien franchise to its roots — an alien vs a bunch of people sans any real weapons — yet the story is so uneven in places that it never ever is able to “get going” and never takes the audience for the ride we were expecting to go on after Aliens.
Now that I think about it, the craziest choice in Alien 3 is that you’ve got at the time one of the most beautiful and famous actresses on the planet with Weaver who in this film has a shaved head and looks more like one of the ragged male prisoners than one of the most recognizable actors on the planet which is a bold chose to say the least.
The third season of the TBS series Angie Tribeca is set to debut April 10 but the premiere episode debuted a bit early a few weeks back. I’ve enjoyed Angie Tribeca the last few years and this third season seems to be shaking things up a bit. In previous seasons, the show was structured around self-contained episodes with a sort’a season-long story arch taking up some of 
Which is a shame since the 1987 Dragnet has been all but forgotten to time but Spaceballs remains a cult classic film to this day.
May 19 sees the release of Alien: Covenant, the third Ridley Scott Alien film, and a direct sequel to Prometheus (2012). Prometheus got a bad rap by the critics but made more than $400 million at the box office hence Alien Covenant. What’s interesting here is that from the looks of things Scott has taken Alien: Covenant back to something a little more in the vein of Alien with the crew of a ship fighting the insect-like baddies and away from the more esoteric Prometheus, which I happened to like a great deal. Luckily, I also happen to like Alien a great deal too and couldn’t be more excited for this movie if I tried.
The creators of The Mummy on June 9 are attempting to create their own franchise and so-called “shared universe” of movies with the Universal Monsters. Starring Tom Cruise not as the mummy but someone trying to stop her from destroying the world, early looks at The Mummy seem to indicate something like Mission Impossible crossed with Suicide Squad. The Mummy is the first movie of this interconnected film universe that will also include the likes of The Invisible Man, Wolf Man, Frankenstein and the Creature from the Black Lagoon in future films if this one’s a hit.
A third Planet of the Apes film War for the Planet of the Apes is out July 14. The Apes film series is one of my favorites with the first chronicling why the apes got their smarts and the second what was happening with them just after the fall of man. This third film seems to be the story about the final apes vs man battle, with the winner taking claim to the planet. If you’ve seen the 1960s/1970s apes movies I’m sure you know how that works out.