Here are the best commercials and trailers that aired during the 2021 Super Bowl. This was a Super Bowl like no other due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Health officials warned people to limit social gatherings encouraging virtual watch parties instead. A lucky few to see the action from the sidelines were some very special VIPs — healthcare workers saving American lives and some U.S. Capitol Police members present on Jan. 6. The crowd was smaller (the lowest attendance since the inaugural game in 1967), and face masks muffled cheers. However, this didn’t dampen the mood as fans watched Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ Tom Brady, the best quarterback of all time, go head to head with Kansas City Chief’s Patrick Mahomes, the best quarterback of his generation.
Many fans who would normally be huddled together at sports bars found themselves munching on wings with people they’ve been on lockdown with for nearly a year. However, while the pandemic has resulted in a string of delays to movie releases and productions, the biggest night of the NFL did still bring many clever commercials and tantalizing trailers. This time-honored tradition gives networks, studios, and streaming services a chance to create buzz for their shows and movies and companies the opportunity to piggyback on the game’s high ratings to boost product sales.
Some commercials took a more serious tone, using the platform to address a fractured nation. Others featured entertainment heavy hitters such as Winona Ryder, selling everything from snack foods to cars. Two things are certain, the pandemic isn’t slowing down superheroes, and hard seltzer is suddenly a thing. The Super Bowl didn’t live up to the hype, but these trailers and commercials did.
Amazon Dot Commercial With Michael B. Jordan
No offense to Alexa, but she’s no Michael B. Jordan, who People named their Sexiest Man Alive in 2020. In the ad for the new Amazon Dot, a woman envisions Jordan as the smart speaker. Jordan performs usually mundane tasks like dimming the lights (while shedding his shirt), reading an audiobook (in the bathtub), and turning on the sprinklers, which causes her husband to comment that “Things are getting way too wet around here.” Jordan himself is brilliantly game and the ad smartly plays up on his appearance, making for a lot of fun in the process.
Cheetos’ Super Bowl Commercial With Mila Kunis & Ashton Kutcher
Real-life couple Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher’s biggest marital problem appears to be her addiction to Cheetos Crunch Pop Mix. Despite Kutcher constantly catching his wife and former That ’70s Show co-star crunching on his favorite snack, rapper Shaggy offers Kunis some solid advice, deny, deny, deny. When confronted with the bag in hand in the kitchen, on the couch, hiding in the shower, and crouched in a closet with her face and fingers covered in orange dust, a doe-eyed Kunis insists, “It wasn’t me.” Kunis and Kutcher are obviously great together, and Shaggy hilariously plays mediator, reworking the lyrics to his 200o hit to squash the squabbling between the lovebirds.
The Falcon And The Winter Soldier Trailer
Disney+ is riding high with the success of WandaVision, and from the looks of the action-packed trailer for The Falcon and The Winter Soldier TV series, the streaming service is poised to have another hit show to add to its lineup. The series, comprised of six episodes, premieres on March 19 and takes place following the events of Avengers: Endgame. Sam, aka “Falcon” (Anthony Mackie) and Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), will find time to trade barbs while saving the world. They’ll join forces with Sharon Carter (Emily Van Camp) and Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) to battle Baron Zemo (Daniel Brül), and the trailer does a great job of mixing MCU action with strong character beats, showing off its key titular dynamic in style.
Bud Light Seltzer Lemonade Commercial
Bud Light decided to take a much-needed light-hearted approach when looking back on the disaster that was 2020. There’s need to rehash all the gory details, so the commercial shows people getting pelted by a neverending downpour of lemons ruining social gatherings, sporting events, and travel plans. Sound familiar? It’s a disaster movie parody with a “twist.” So what do you do when life hands you lemons (or drops them on your head)? You drink Bud Light Seltzer Lemonade and hope 2021 isn’t as bad as the previous year.
Edgar Scissorhands Cadillac Commercial
Stranger Things star Winona Ryder reprises her Edward Scissorhands role as Kim Boggs, and Academy Award nominee Timotheé Chalamet (Call Me by Your Name) plays her and Edward’s son Edgar. The boy’s teen angst is amplified because he inherited his father’s most defining physical characteristic. He can’t play football, and he’s banned from public transportation. Kim, now a middle-aged suburban mom buys her son a car to lift his spirits, a Cadillac LYRIQ (Johnny Depp not included). The spot expertly pulls double-duty as a commercial and well-pitched movie parody, and is made all the more enjoyable by Ryder and Chalamet’s performances.
Jeep Super Bowl Commercial
While many had high hopes for 2021 marking a turning point for the country, it remains as fractured as ever in the wake of the 2020 presidential election. Several commercials urged Americans to come together, even if it means just sharing a beer. Jeep took it a bit further, with Bruce Springsteen suggesting everyone “meet in the middle.” Jeep couldn’t have picked a better spokesperson, a music legend as American as apple pie, even though the chorus of one of his most beloved songs, “Born in the USA,” isn’t so much an anthem as an indictment. A knee-jerk reaction would be to politicize the ad or dismiss it, and America’s can-do spirit has been deflated, but a call to compromise isn’t an unreasonable request.
Old Trailer
Old, written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, shows a family trip to the beach taking a bizarre turn. In the span of a few hours, a woman’s children age into full-grown adults. There’s screaming and a woman convulsing on the beach, so someone saying, “There’s something wrong with the beach,” seems redundant. The Old Super Bowl trailer conjures up a lot of what’s now expected from Shyamalan, giving away few details while offering intriguing and exciting teases of the mystery to be unravelled.
Paramount+ Expedition: Sweet Victory Commercial
ViacomCBS has pulled out all the stops to promote its streaming service Parmount+, which launches on March 4. A series of ads that chronicles the journey of an assortment of the media conglomerate’s TV characters and personalities, including RuPaul (RuPaul’s Drag Race), James Corden (The Late Late Show with James Corden), Gayle King, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Captain Spike (Anson Mounty) and Spock (Ethan Peck), Jersey Shore’s Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, Survivor host Jeff Probst, Dora the Explorer, and Beavis and Butthead as they climbed Paramount Mountain.
The campaign began during the AFC Championship Game, and the weary travelers finally reached their destination during the fourth and final installment, “Sweet Victory,” where they were met by Patrick Stewart knocking back a martini made by Stephen Colbert. It’s a wonderful payoff to the series of ads, made all the better by Stewart’s mountaintop dance moves.
The Voice Judges Reunite For T-Mobile’s Super Bowl Commercial
T-Mobile created an origin story for Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani’s romance. The commercial is set in before the couple took their relationship public in 2015. Gwen calls fellow Voice judge Adam Levine she’s looking for a guy from another country, “someone cultured and sensitive and someone who’s not threatened by a strong, confident woman.” However, a spotty network connection leaves out a few keywords. Enter Blake Shelton singing about wings and nachos. Stefani waits in a restaurant for her dream guy, in saunters Shelton having just hopped off his horse. T-Mobile warns viewers, “Don’t trust your love life to just any network.” The ad sort of misses the mark since the two singers are engaged, but it also has fun with Levine and Shelton’s love-hate bromance and revisits people’s initial shock and awe over the seemingly incompatible couple.
