As Johnny Hekker sent a beautiful, record breaking 65-yard punt through the air with 8:53 left in the third quarter, and I jumped with excitement for the first time in the entirety of the game, I came to a realization: Super Bowl LIII is boring, and the only thing that can salvage it is the entertainment of the commercials.
The commercials started off with a bang, as Hyundai showed an ad about promoting their shopper assurance. In an effort to do this, Hyundai compared traditional car shopping experiences with other things that people don’t like to do, such as getting a root canal, sitting in the middle seat on the plane, and getting the all too familiar “talk.” Actor, Jason Bateman starred as the elevator operator in the commercial as the ad treated different scenarios as a floor in a hotel. For example, one of the floors was the cabin of an airplane in which the person getting off had to seat in the dreaded middle seat. While the commercial was light hearted and funny, it was met with some backlash from the vegan community, as they were unhappy with a joke the commercial made about not wanting to go to vegan dinner parties.
The next commercial that made a big splash was Bon & Viv’s Spiked Seltzer. The commercial featured Bon and Viv explaining their product to viewers, and ended with them asking the sharks if they were interested. The camera then switched to four sharks, who, in a tribute to ABC’s Shark Tank, began to make offers to invest in their product.
Additionally, Bud Light stole the show with two different ads involving the infamous Bud Knight. The first one featured the beer company insulting some of their competitors for using corn syrup as an ingredient in their product, including Miller Lite and Coors. Bud Light’s next ad was a crossover teaser with HBO’s popular series Game of Thrones, and it was awesome. The commercial used many different aspects of the TV show, as the commercial took signature scenes out of many different parts of the show.
Staying with the theme of teasers, Marvel Studios released not one but two of them for their highly anticipated upcoming movies, Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame. While both teasers were cool, they were also disappointing, as they failed to give away anything about the movies’ plot. We shouldn’t expect to be given any indication of the plot anytime soon, either, as head of Marvel Studios Kevin Feige confirmed that the footage used in all of the trailers for Endgame would only come from the first “15 or 20 minutes of the film.”
As per usual, companies spent months preparing and planning for the perfect commercial for the Super Bowl, and sparing no expense doing so. According to Sporting News, CBS charged companies a record $5.25 million for a 30 second spot during the game. While this price point may seem ridiculous, over 100 million people watched Super Bowl LIII according to International Business Times, which means the ads give companies a ton of exposure. Additionally, 20 percent of those people only tune into the big game for the commercials, according to Washington Top News.
With both teams punting or turning it over on almost every drive of the game, the commercials were the only thing that were able to keep viewers entertained.