The annual Super Bowl broadcast invariably features a torrent of TV spots promoting the movies that Hollywood hopes will be massive at the multiplexes in 2015. Sunday’s event is expected to give us 30-second glimpses of Jurassic World, The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Terminator: Genisys and Minions, among others, and there is even talk, however unlikely, of a fresh look at Star Wars: The Force Awakens or a first glimpse of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Here’s a quick rundown of what we can expect.  Marvel has released a new TV spot for Joss Whedon’s upcoming superhero epic, though it’s little more than an edited version of the full-length trailer that appeared online earlier this month. Still, those of us who wanted to see just a little bit more of the Hulk and Iron Man in the Hulkbuster suit smashing up the Big Apple will not be disappointed. Is it me, or could James Spader’s voice do with a bit more processing to make it sound machine-like? Robots that sound just like us seem to be the new thing – Interstellar took a similar approach – but this is a comic book movie. I like my merciless mechanical maniacs to come with a bit more menace.  Speaking of which, Alan Taylor’s debut turn in the director’s chair once inhabited by James Cameron will need to do more than simply reinstalling Arnold Schwarzenegger as the T-800 if it’s to turn around a sci-fi saga that looks to be in terminal (sorry) decline. December’s debut trailer for Arnie’s return as the ultimate cyborg meanie gave us far too much of a preposterously scarred John Connor (Jason Clarke), and served only to remind us of the lesson taught by 2009’s Terminator: Salvation: namely, that a future inhabited only by monstrous machines and battle-hardened human resistance fighters is likely to be really, really tedious. Here’s one instance where the high cost of Super Bowl ad time comes in useful: the TV spot is all set in the 20th century, and also gives us a little more really old Arnie. But is the dyed white hair really necessary? The man is fast approaching his 70s.  Those of us wondering how the loveable but pretty much incomprehensible cheese-coloured sidekicks from the brilliant Despicable Me movies were going to carry their own feature-length movie will have been relieved to note that a narrator has been employed for this rather unlikely spin-off. The Super Bowl spot doesn’t reference last November’s trailer, which revealed that the new film is a prequel about the minions’ millennium-spanning search for a suitably villainous master. Instead, it’s all fun and games as the hapless homunculi party on down as if watching their very own minion Superbowl.  Brad Bird’s sci-fi fantasy could be this year’s surprise package. All we really know, courtesy of last October’s trailer, is that it centres on a young woman who inadvertently discovers a path to another dimension. George Clooney plays a “grizzled inventor” (about as grizzled as Clooney gets, then) who appears to hold the key to this dizzyingly futuristic land.  It’s a Disney movie – but that doesn’t mean what it used to. There are shades of Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz about the storyline, but if this is a cosy, family-friendly fantasy fable, why does it feature a hero who has just got out of jail? The film seems likely to be closer to another tale of exotic otherworlds, the underrated John Carter, with which it shares a certain veneer of wide-eyed retro-futurism. The studio has published a 12-second “preview” of its Super Bowl spot, for those who can spare the time.  So far, there isn’t as much as a glimpse of the footage that Universal is planning to show us, but fans will be hoping for a closer look at the “hybrid” dinosaur which a previous trailer suggested meddling geneticists have been cooking up in their labs for the new movie. Just so long as it’s nothing to do with the appalling “human-dino” mish-mash once proposed for a long ago abandoned instalment of the long-running sci-fi series. It couldn’t be, could it? Chris Pratt is certainly the man of the moment after standout turns in two of 2014’s biggest movies, Guardians of the Galaxy and The Lego Movie – both of which required him to show off his comedy chops. Can he do the fearful everyman schtick just as well?  Related: Jurassic Park IV: something has survived (and it seems to be half human) | Ben Child
Forget the football, just watch the trailers: Hollywood is splashing out on some expensive ad-time to show off its forthcoming wares, writes Ben Child