This past weekend was CCXP, a fan convention in São Paolo, Brazil which dwarfs even New York and San Diego Comic Cons in size. Studios broke out the big guns, dropping trailers, teasing release dates, debuting new footage for fans, and generally stoking the fires of fandom. By all accounts it was a fun time. But for those of us who couldn’t make the trip down to Brazil, there is still an absolute smorgaspord of nerdy news to sort through from the event.
Case in point: plenty of new trailers are now out there on the internet from studios like HBO and Prime Video, showcasing brand new shows and movies as well as returning series. Let’s run through the biggest ones in the fantasy and sci-fi space, and rank them by their respective splendor!
6. The Boys season 4
It feels strange to say it, but among the new trailers to drop this weekend, Prime Video’s subversive superhero show The Boys excited me the least. That’s not to say it wasn’t still cool; it’s just that what it’s promising isn’t too different from what we’ve seen in previous seasons.
The Boys is the veteran show of the bunch. So far it’s released three seasons and two spinoffs, the last of which, Gen V, ties directly into season 4. From the looks of the trailer, things will be reaching a boiling point politically as presidential candidate (and secret supe) Victoria Neuman makes her run for office while Homelander stokes division among people from the shadows. Except with Homelander, you know there’s no way he’ll actually stay on the sidelines; that guy thrives as the center of attention, bloody and grinning.
We’ll be meeting a few new faces this time around, the most prominent of which is a mysterious ally of Billy Butcher’s played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Walking Dead). It’s nice to get a first look at his character in the trailer—just enough to hook us and get us wondering about his motives and his past with Butcher.
The Boys season 4 trailer also loses a couple of points for being cagey about the release window. It doesn’t even technically confirm that it’s coming out next year, just that it’s “coming soon.” Come on Amazon, work with us here!
5. Halo season 2
Is it insane that I’m ranking Paramount+’s Halo trailer over The Boys? Maybe, but I’d be lying if I said this trailer didn’t get me a lot more excited. The Boys may be an unquestionably better show, but in my opinion Halo season 2 had the better trailer.
Season 1 of the sci-fi action show based on the beloved Halo video game series had its ups and downs; generally, it seems to have alienated a lot of the diehard video game fans while roping in some of us newbies who don’t care overmuch whether the Master Chief takes off his helmet or shows his butt cheeks. But despite any potential rough patches, the trailer for season 2 gave me chills. It paints a very tense picture of an alien invasion of a major human planet, Reach. Even just in the trailer, the devastation is immense.
Of course, Master Chief and the rest of his Spartan super-soldier companions are mixing it up right in the thickest of the fighting against the alien Covenant forces. If the season can live up to how breathtaking the trailer is, we could be in for a major leap forward in quality for Halo in season 2.
The Halo trailer also gains a few extra points for giving us a hard release date for the season, and it’s sooner than expected! Halo season 2 premieres on Paramount+ on February 8, 2024.
4. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
Switching over to movies for a minute, Legendary Pictures’ Monsterverse franchise debuted a first look at its next movie: Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Sure, Godzilla Minus One may be crushing it at the box office as we speak, but one can never have too many kaiju films on the horizon.
This one will see Godzilla and Kong team up to fight another giant ape kaiju which seemingly lives in the center of the Earth. These movies are all about the spectacle, and from the looks of things The New Empire will have plenty. From the dizzying shot of Pterodactyls flying across the subterranean landscape to Godzilla breaking out of the ice, to the menacing new orange ape kaiju there’s a lot to sink our teeth into in this trailer.
There’s still plenty of mystery though. What’s the deal with the new human culture that seems to live down in the hollow Earth? Is this new ape related to Kong in some way? And how does one get down to this hidden world in the center of the planet?
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire premieres sometime in 2024.
3. Fallout
The prize for the most interesting trailer of the weekend goes to Prime Video’s Fallout, which debuted the very first footage from the series. Like Halo, this one is based on a video game series. However, since this is the first time we’ve really seen anything from the show, the trailer had a lot of heavy lifting to do to introduce the overall premise to audiences at large.
I think it does a pretty damn good job of showing how our lead Lucy is emerging from her privileged life in an underground vault into a radioactive wasteland inhabited by all sorts of nasty creatures and human survivors engaging in Mad Max-style mayhem. But it also captures the spirit of the Fallout games very well, which is no small task. There’s a specific sort of tongue-in-cheek humor to Fallout which meshes a post-apocalyptic setting with 1940s nostalgia. The trailer nails it almost to a fault; I still can’t decide if “From the studio that brought you Free 2-Day Shipping*” is clever or groanworthy, but it fits.
Fallout hits Prime Video on April 12, 2024.
2. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
We also got an actual Mad Max trailer over the weekend. Eight years after writer-director George Miller broke our brains with the sheer adrenaline of Mad Max: Fury Road, he’s back with the prequel, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.
Furiosa stars Anya Taylor-Joy as a younger version of the character Charlize Theron played in Fury Road, alongside Chris Hemsworth as the villain Dementus. Both look transformed in the film; after seeing Hemsworth play the charming and heroic Thor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe for so many years, it’s going to be wild to watch him play a character as demented as Dementus.
The special effects look a little half-baked in some of the shots of the Furiosa trailer, but I’m going to just assume they’re still being worked on. This film is going to be a feast for the senses, and it’d be silly to assume we’re going to get anything other than another wild ride from Miller. Fury Road was nominated for 10 Oscars including Best Picture, and a solid 50 minutes of that film is just the most electric car chase you’ve ever seen. I can’t wait to see what Furiosa holds.
1. House of the Dragon season 2
Look, at the end of the day, we’re a Game of Thrones site. It would be a betrayal of the kind that gets people beheaded in Westeros to name anything other than the epic trailer for House of the Dragon season 2 as the best of the weekend. Of course, it helps that, in my opinion, the trailer for House of the Dragon season 2 genuinely was the best trailer of the weekend anyway!
House of the Dragon is coming back for its sophomore season next year on HBO, so the first-ever trailer for season 2 wastes no time setting the stage for the war to come. Season 1 ended with Westeros on the brink of war as rival factions of the Targaryen family finally dug in their heels and prepared to take to the battlefield. In season 2, battle will be joined both on the ground and in the air: yup, the dragons are gonna fight, and it’s gonna be brutal.
We get a glimpse of more than a few dragons and riders in this trailer, from an epic shot of the lumbering behemoth Vhagar taking to the sky over a battle in a forest to Rhaenyra Targaryen and her mount Syrax facing off against what looks like Seasmoke and its rider, new character Addam of Hull. Add in a few quick glimpses of iconic scenes from George R.R. Martin’s book Fire & Blood like the infamous Blood and Cheese sequence, and there’s plenty in this trailer to keep up the excitement for quite a while.
The House of the Dragon season 2 trailer also set in stone what we’ve been hearing for months now: the show is returning in Summer 2024. We don’t know whether that means early or late summer, but we’ll just block off the whole season now as Dragon season.
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