15 hours ago
5
Key events Show key events only Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature
Benjamin Lee
Only for salty freaks
Who new Ritz had such game? The saltiest cracker brand has hired the saltiest of celebrities – Aubrey Plaza and Michael Shannon – for their new Super Bowl spot, trying to outdo each other, only to be met with a very smiley Bad Bunny, breaking the rules. One of tonight’s better ideas and smarter use of celebrities.
Adrian Horton
Like presumably half the viewers this evening, we have eyes on Taylor Swift, who is in her private zone with Ice Spice, the Haim sisters and her family:
Wearing bedazzled (lol) jean shorts with white leather boots:
Making meme-ories already:
And a full look at TNT’s fits – she is at least true to her style with the thigh-high boots, oversized jacket and cut-off denim.
Adrian Horton
Tom Brady and Snoop Dogg say no to hate
Tom Brady and Snoop Dogg list reasons people hate – because you’re from a different neighborhood, look different, act different, are different – in this spot that calls for people to “stand up to hate”. A nice message, to be sure, though quite hypocritical given that it’s on behalf of the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism – a group founded by Patriots owner and noted Zionist Robert Kraft, who has blamed protests against Israel’s invasion of Gaza, which has killed an estimated 60,000 people, on “disinformation” and conflated Palestine with Hamas.
Alaina Demopoulos
Coors has a bad case of the Mondays
An ad that might make you rethink that last beer from Coors, about sloths at work the day after the Super Bowl, perhaps one of the Monday-ist Mondays of the year.
Benjamin Lee
Food Avengers assemble
A pretty smart ad here from app Instacart that turns a standard shopping list into a range of characters storming their way to your day. There’s the Jolly Green Giant, the Kool-Aid Man and even a cameo from the shirtless Old Spice guy Isaiah Mustafa, making us all feel guilty for how much of that dip we’ve already eaten.
Alaina Demopoulos
Tripping on Baja Blast
Here’s what I’m getting from this Mountain Dew ad: drink enough Baja Blast and you’ll trip so hard you imagine Seal (the singer) as a seal (the marine mammal) crooning the 1995 hit and dentist office standard Kiss from a Rose – er, lime, in this case.
Adrian Horton
Barry Keoghan’s donkey gets a website
In a cute and clever spot that capitalizes on both Irish accents and latent goodwill for all Irish donkeys, Squarespace reunites the two breakout stars of 2022’s The Banshees of Inisherin: Barry Keoghan and Jenny the Donkey (justice for Jenny!). Except Jenny is actually Don Mosley the donkey, seeking a publicist and agent via his new website.
Adrian Horton
A lot of futurist ads and American propaganda already this evening. And fittingly, T-Mobile has backed away from celebrities for a primetime spot touting its partnership with Elon Musk’s Starlink, which promises to bring satellite connections to all of the cellular dead zones in the US. Likely won’t be the only ad helping out a tech billionaire this evening!
Adrian Horton
Michelob’s Ultra pickleball players
My favorite spot of the night so far, because there is no better pair of actors to play to deceptively serious, deviously talented pickleball players than Catherina O’Hara and Willem Dafoe. A delight from start to trophy finish.
Benjamin Lee
Thunderbolts
Disney also teased its other big summer bet Thunderbolts with a 30-second version of a brand new trailer that’s just been released online. “The Avengers are not coming” says Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Wario-ed Nick Fury at the start of the preview for the sorta antiheroes assemble caper (technically not true given that a new Avengers film has been given the green light) before a series of quips, explosions and an ironically used 80s pop song to lure Deadpool fans to their local cinema this May.
Alaina Demopoulos
How should Meta distract users from Mark Zuckerberg’s cozy embrace of Trump, nixing of DEI programs and factchecking services on the platform, and very weird comments about masculinity? How about a Super Bowl ad for Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, featuring Chris Hemsworth and Chris Pratt perusing (and destroying) Kris Jenner’s art collection?
Adrian Horton
Barrymore and Bloom make small talk
Drew Barrymore and Orlando Bloom come together, and compare accents (how to say schedule, etc), for MSC Cruises
Benjamin Lee
How to Train Your Dragon
Maybe one of the least necessary animated-to-live-action transfers we’ve been lumped with for a while, the How to Train Your Dragon spot doesn’t offer anything we didn’t already expect and haven’t already seen before. It feels like the original wasn’t all that long ago and with the dragon looking essentially the same in both, it’s a struggle to know why we’re here again.
Adrian Horton
Eugene Levy loses his eyebrows
Little Caesars’s Crazy Puffs are so eyebrow-raising delectable that they cause Eugene Levy’s famously strong brows to fly right off his face like a gray, distinguished moth – which makes for images more unnerving than appealing.
Benjamin Lee
Lilo and Stitch
Disney deserves some reluctant credit here for creating a Super Bowl ad that doesn’t just resemble a condensed trailer, turning something eye-rollingly predictable (a live-action Lilo & Stitch) into an advert we're actually surprised by. The 30-second spot has the once-animated, now CG monster invade the pitch, helping to kick off a campaign that will most likely make the most of all Fox and Disney channels in the next few months.
Adrian Horton
Ben Affleck doubles down for Dunkin’
Aaaand the first commercial of the game goes to Ben Affleck, who would like you to forget that last year he did his Dunkin’ spot with one Jennifer Lopez … but not that he’s forever and always from Boston. This first clip is actually part of a seven-minute short film called DunKings 2, featuring his brother Casey, former Patriots coach Bill Belichick, Belichick’s 24-year-old girlfriend and Jeremy Strong, poking fun at his Serious Actor reputation.
Benjamin Lee
And here’s that aforementioned Lady Gaga performance:
Benjamin Lee
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
There are many many restarts this summer – Final Destination, Fantastic Four, Jurassic World – but there is one major end. Just don’t tell Tom Cruise. What is now being marketed as the last Mission: Impossible film was once supposed to be the second part of the seventh yet underwhelming box office has changed both title and strategy with Paramount hoping, reportedly against its star’s wishes, to wrap things up. This new spot pushes that selling point hard, a sad goodbye for one of the only consistently enjoyable franchises we have.
Adrian Horton
She did say So High School …
Adrian Horton
And one final performance from another noted New Orleans performer – Jon Batiste delivers a spirited and upbeat national anthem with a little jazz flavor, accompanied by a beautifully painted piano and, naturally (because America), fighter jets.
Adrian Horton
Still rolling through the music performances prior to kickoff – Trombone Shorty and contemporary Christian singer Lauren Daigle, both natives of Louisiana, perform a jazzy version of America the Beautiful. Much more successful than Fergie’s infamously jazzy national anthem.
Adrian Horton
An especially star-studded Super Bowl this year! Missouri native Jon Hamm introduces the Kansas City Chiefs and noted Philly fan Bradley Cooper brings in his hometown Philadelphia Eagles. And that’s it from us on the teams in this game!
Benjamin Lee
More celebs! In fact, more celebs than usual at the Super Bowl?
Benjamin Lee
Here’s that very patriotic Brad Pitt ad:
Adrian Horton
Now we’re on to a musical celebration of New Orleans, from jazz to hip-hop, marching big brass bands to bounce, featuring Harry Connick, Jr (and the voice of New Orleans cultural icon Big Freedia). A hype way to start the evening, and convincing that New Orleans is a premiere US city for live music.
Adrian Horton
On a pure name recognition level, the two most famous people in attendance tonight are Taylor Swift and Donald Trump. One very much wants to be associated with the other, and one would love to have her name out of his mouth.
A brief rundown of their terse relations: Trump, you may recall, published an AI-generated fake endorsement from Swift last summer. The singer – who avoided politics entirely until 2018 and remains loath to make a statement – then supported Kamala Harris with a very Taylor Instagram post calling out said fake endorsement. Trump then posted on Truth Social: “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT.”
So I would not expect them to interact tonight, nor would I want to see it.
Benjamin Lee
A pre-recorded video paying tribute to the resilience and community of New Orleans in the face of the recent tragic truck attack in January. Lady Gaga, all in white, is performing an emotional performance of her Top Gun: Maverick theme to a crowd of locals and some football celebrities. It’s a smart way to nod to recent events and provide a rousing kickoff to tonight’s events. Video to come soon …
Adrian Horton
Brad Pitt is making sure you know that football is culture. The actor just showed up in a PSA for … the Super Bowl? That was essentially a rambling collage of American propaganda. Appearing in New Orleans – an interesting choice, given the many issues with homes his foundation built there post-Katrina – Pitt waxes poetic on the football huddle as “a metaphor for our history” along with many platitudes on American unity, for a game Donald Trump is attending.
Alaina Demopoulos
Planes, trains and Oikos
A planes, trains and automobiles theme from Dannon’s Oikos Greek yoghurt: Juno Temple carries Cleveland Browns defensive end Miles Garrett on her back through a busy terminal so he can catch his plane on time.
Adrian Horton
Remember when Super Bowl advertisers tried very hard to convince people to buy into crypto? (Tom Brady would love you to forget.) Or the year with weird Scientology ads? This year, the mainstream normalization push is for AI. Several companies, including Google, Meta and Salesforce, will have spots touting their AI ventures. And OpenAI, makers of ChatGPT, will purportedly have their first Big Game ad, assumedly to make generative AI seem less scary to the average American consumer.
Andrew Lawrence
We just had a pretty stirring performance from Ledisi of Lift Every Voice and Sing. Given the NFL’s decision to remove the “END RACISM” logos from the end zones, it’s somewhat surprising the league kept on with the song – one of their big concessions to come out of Colin Kaepernick kneeling to bring awareness to social justice and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Benjamin Lee
Kendrick vs Drake! Taylor vs Trump! That team vs that other team! Here’s a look at what you can expect from tonight:
Adrian Horton
Spotted: one Taylor Swift. Outfit judgment forthcoming.
Adrian Horton
Ahead of the game, in the latest move of what is shaping up to be the greatest Oscar campaign in recent memory, Timotheé Chalamet managed to get in a car with Kendrick Lamar to talk shop. And be a fan boy, of course. Full clip below:
Benjamin Lee
There are multiple non-football celebrities already in attendance, close-ish the normies. More to come …
Benjamin Lee
Kendrick gave a rare interview this week with Apple Music if you want to look for some clues of what to expect from tonight’s performance:
The Bowl Begins
Benjamin Lee
It’s that time of year once again for our sports brethren to focus on the big game and for us to focus on everything else. The Super Bowl is of course primarily about football, but for us it’s about the culture surrounding it.
This year will see a more star-packed bundle of expensive ads than ever before with celebrities such as Charli xcx and Ben Affleck, the re-appearance of Taylor Swift and whichever big-name friends she brings along, and, most importantly, recent Grammy winner Kendrick Lamar taking over the half-time show.
It’s set to be an exciting night for many Americans and a hellish night for one Canadian (will Lamar perform his controversial Drake diss track to the biggest crowd of his life?) and we will be here to cover every little non-sport moment of the night, so stay tuned.
