'The Angry Birds Movie 2' Trailer: Look On These Birds, Ye Mighty, And Despair

There's a new movie was coming out that stars Jason Sudeikis, Danny McBride, Bill Hader, Rachel Bloom, Peter Dinklage, Sterling K. Brown, Josh Gad, Zach Woods, and Awkwafina. Exciting, right? Unfortunately not, because, as you may have deduced by now, that movie is The Angry Birds Movie 2, a follow-up to the 2016 film which was based on the popular mobile phone game. I know that the bar isn't always sky-high for animated movies aimed at children, but woof, this thing looks rough. Check out the final trailer below.

It's hard to believe something this bland comes from the same studio that released Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, but here we are. The Angry Birds Movie pulled in over $350 million worldwide when it was released three years ago (trivia: nearly 70% of its box office haul came from international audiences), and clearly Sony Pictures Animation thought that was enough to justify going back to the well. But after seeing how animated films like Spider-Verse and Pixar's Toy Story 4 can do such exceptional things within this medium, this trailer leaves me feeling deflated. Not even the presence of Europe's "The Final Countdown," a song that always makes me think of the golden age of Arrested Development, could save this.

Thurop Van Orman, who wrote for shows like Adventure Time and The Powerpuff Girls and created the 2010 series The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, is making his feature directorial debut with this movie. My biggest takeaway from this trailer: I hope The Angry Birds Movie 2 gives actors like Bill Hader enough of a financial cushion to take creative risks elsewhere in their careers that they might not have been able to otherwise. If something like this contributes to a new season of Hader's HBO series Barry, for example, I suppose it will all have been worth it.

Here's the film's official synopsis:

The flightless angry birds and the scheming green piggies take their beef to the next level in The Angry Birds Movie 2! When a new threat emerges that puts both Bird and Pig Island in danger, Red (Jason Sudeikis), Chuck (Josh Gad), Bomb (Danny McBride), and Mighty Eagle (Peter Dinklage) recruit Chuck's sister Silver (Rachel Bloom) and team up with pigs Leonard (Bill Hader), his assistant Courtney (Awkwafina), and techpig Garry (Sterling K. Brown) to forge an unsteady truce and form an unlikely superteam to save their homes.

The Angry Birds Movie 2 crashes into theaters on August 14, 2019.