Trailer: Fast & Furious 6 spoils but excites while laying down the flag as the biggest action franchise around.

Despite my hope that Universal wouldn't feel the need to expand upon their superb Super Bowl commercial, Universal doesn't just have a new trailer, but an incredibly lengthy 3:22 trailer to boot.  It basically does little more than to expand upon the plot spoilers hinted at in the teaser, with only the last 60 seconds or so devoted to spoilery stunts and action.  I could argue that the trailer should have ended at the 2:20 mark and gone out as an extended tease, but I know that I'm shouting at the wins.  It's great stuff, although I rolled my eyes a bit at the random shots of gyrating women and the cliche of having the main female heroine (newcomer Gina Carano) squaring off against the main female villain (back-from-the-dead Michelle Rodriguiez) rather than having cross-gender fighting.  Those quibbles aside, this looks pretty spectacular, and it seems that the once laughable Fast & Furious franchise is now basically the top pure action franchise in Hollywood in the moment, give-or-take the newly rejuvenated 007 franchise.  The stunts look great, everybody looks happy to be back, and this could easily be one of the biggest movies of the summer, if not the biggest behind surefire smashes Iron Man 3 and Star Trek Into Darkness. Sung Kang is still around, meaning that we're still in pre-Tokyo Drify territory.  Expect his fiery demise to get ret-conned somewhere along the way, perhaps in a gambit involving time travel.  Anyway, Fast & Furious 6 looks like a genuinely great piece of earthbound action.  Now can Universal quit while it's ahead and not spoil anything else from here on out?

Scott Mendelson

Fast & Furious 6 teaser wins the Super Bowl. I dare Universal to not cut any more marketing materials until after it opens.

Well, that was worth the wait, but then Universal, like Paramount's Transformers series, has always done well by way of Super Bowl teasers with this long-running franchise.  A few notes.  A) Are the random shots of scantily-clad gyrating women really necessary?  B) I still think Universal is nuts not to open this one in April where it will absolutely dominate the pre-summer season.  Oh sure, it may well win the Memorial Day weekend race, but everybody loses a little by the demo head-to-head match ups.  The Hangover III and Fast & Furious 6 are literally targeting the same demographic and both films will open a bit less than they otherwise would have without direct competition.  Coming off the obscenely good and quite popular Fast Five, an unopposed Fast & Furious 6 would be looking at a $100 million+ Fri-Sun debut.  Heck, The Hangover part III may well have a shot at that too under different circumstances, even if the second film wasn't quite as beloved as the first one.  But going head-to-head?  Now both will be lucky to get past $75 million apiece.  For what?  A dick-measuring contest?  Anyway, last point, this is such a grand and effective teaser that I challenge Universal to stop.