Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s the Smurfs, falling from the sky in a cheeky Superman gag. The two films premiere just a week apart, with Smurfs hitting theaters July 18. But its summer blockbuster competitor is not the only film the Smurfs trailer cribs from. The entire trailer is kind of a tired mix of other movies, not least of which are the previous Smurfs features.
This version is ostensibly a reboot, but if you were tuning into the previous big-screen Smurfs this one will feel pretty familiar (even beyond being based on a decades-old cartoon). Like 2011’s The Smurfs, this one is a hybrid of live action and animation. Like 2017’s Smurfs: The Lost Village, this one promises to explore the Smurfs’ origins. It also features a pop star as the voice of Smurfette. (In 2011, it was Katy Perry; in 2017, Demi Lovato; and now in 2025, it’s Rihanna.) The film appears to feature a multiverse of mixed animation styles that recalls Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse. Perhaps most familiar are the parts of the trailer that feel copied straight from Barbie: like Barbieland, Smurf Village is described as a perfect place where “every Smurf has a job” prescribed by their personality and “nothing ever goes wrong.” The blonde protagonist blissfully enjoys a choreographed DJ dance party until an existential threat forces her to travel to the “real world.”
What is new in the trailer is the music. Well, sort of. Fans eager for Rihanna to get back in the studio may be disappointed. It’s unclear whether it’s her voice singing a snippet of Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is A Place On Earth.” The Smurfs trailer does promise that the soundtrack features “new music from Rihanna,” but is it just going to be covers? (Also, Trolls much?) There’s also an original song called “Higher Love” by Desi Trill featuring DJ Khaled, Cardi B, Natania and Subhi, but we already have a perfectly good “Higher Love” at home, so we’ll see how that one goes. Hopefully, the full Smurfs movie has something more original to offer than the trailer does.
