No matter who you wanted to win Super Bowl LII, the big game always offers one thing everyone can enjoy without any of the accompanying stress: the commercials. Like every year, this crop included some duds (how do you make Keanu Reeves standing on a motorcycle boring?) along with some totally confounding choices (uh, don’t use Dr. Martin Luther King’s words to sell a truck!) among the winners. But boy were there winners.
Within that lot were a Peter Dinklage/Morgan Freeman rap battle, the final ad for the fake film Dundee, not to mention a slew of teasers for real movies and shows we can’t wait to see this year. We got a preview for the surprise Cloverfield 3 release, a look at season two of Westworld, another teaser for Infinity War, the first trailer for Mission: Impossible – Fallout, the latest glimpse at A Quiet Place, a crazy new peek at Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and finally (FINALLY) a teaser for Solo, whose subtitle may as well be Look at Donald Glover as Lando!
But there were way more that we loved, so here are the rest of the best—the Super Bowl commercials we think made the most of their five-million dollar investment.
Danny DeVito: the Human M&M
We’re here for any and all movies, shows, commercials, and memes featuring Danny DeVito, but having him play an M&M who becomes a real person and then runs around asking people if they want to eat him was glorious.
David Harbour’s “It’s a Tide Ad” Ads
Speaking of people who we would watch in anything, David K. Harbour was all over this year’s Super Bowl with a series of Tide ads that looked like anything but Tide ads (which was the point). Chief Hopper did look pretty spiffy in his clean clothes, and even got the Old Spice-on-a-horse guy!
Keegan-Michael Key Explains Things for Quicken Loans
Um, you know what seems like a very smart way to spend your millions of dollars during the Super Bowl? Cast people we really like in them, because we enjoyed watching Keegan-Michael Key explain overly complicated things in simple terms for Quicken Loans.
Bill Hader Stacks Some Pringles
No, seriously, just make a commercial with a well-liked funny person being funny and we’re going to sit up and watch your ad. Here, we have Bill Hader promoting the stacking of different flavors of Pringles. (Why weren’t we already doing this?)
Tiffany Haddish Supports Local Businesses for Groupon
On the same token, we obviously loved seeing one of our favorite new comedy stars show up in an ad for Groupon that really embraced the spirit of the day. And as any Simpsons fan can tell you, a man getting hit in the groin by a football is always a winner.
Jeff Goldblum Races a T-Rex for Jeep
Speaking of things and people we love, they’ll need to invent a new language and maybe even some new sounds for us to fully explain just how squarely into our wheelhouse this Jurassic Park/Jeff Goldblum/Jeep ad belongs. It was like they made this commercial specifically for us at Nerdist.
The Bud Light Knight
We knew we were going to hear “Dilly Dilly” tonight, since we’ve already heard it roughly a billion gazillion times this NFL season. But the introduction of the smartest knight we’ve ever met was a fresh take on the campaign. Who wants to die in battle when you can have a beer instead?
Eli Manning and O’Dell Beckham Go (Dirty) Dancing
The New York Giants had a terrible season, but two of their biggest stars had one of the funniest commercials of the night as they paid homage to one of the most famous dance scenes in cinematic history.
Febreze’s Man Whose “Bleep” Don’t Stink
Sometimes clever commercials aren’t actually funny, but Febreze’s commercial about a man with a unique problem was funny-clever.
Amazon’s Alexa Loses Her Voice
You know what being the richest man ever in the history of the world gets you? AÂ great commercial with a bunch of stars filling in for Amazon Alexa when she loses her voice. Lucky Jeff Bezos.
So there you have it. Which ad was your favorite this year? Tell us in the comments below.
Images: Tide, Lucasfilm
More from the big game!
- The first Solo trailer is filled with action!
- Read our review of The Cloverfield Paradox
- Dundee reveals its true form: a Super Bowl ad!
