Last week, we brought you a breakdown of the first teaser trailer for The Muppets Mayhem. But that was only thirty seconds and we’ve since gotten two whole more minutes of footage. If you somehow missed the new trailer, here it is again!
Wow, that’s a lot of stuff going on, huh? So let’s do what all fanbases do and pick apart and analyze every little thing we can from a scant amount of footage.
Right off the bat, we’re bombarded with some of the many celebrity cameos – Tommy Lee, Chris Stapelton, and Lil Nas X – all singing the praises of the Electric Mayhem (hey, wordplay!). We also see Danny Trejo, who has become the Muppets’ equivalent to Alan Tudyk being in every Disney animated movie, or Cliff from Cheers in all those Pixar movies.
That’s the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles, where an Electric Mayhem concert is taking place. Hopefully their next stop is in New Jersey. I’d like that! We have plenty of performing arts centers!
Zoot takes a picture of the band with some fans, including a young child dressed Animal; how cute! Zoot seems to have a Polaroid camera throughout the whole trailer, so I’m guessing he’s somehow become the official band photographer. A blue Dave Goelz character who takes pictures all the time? Pfff, like that hasn’t been done before…
While the show seems to be a straight-forward narrative, we get glimpses of the band in what appears to be an interview setting. We later see Kevin Smith attempting to direct the band, and Adam F. Goldberg has revealed an episode is based around a rockumentary format, so these could be the talking head bits from that (wait, no, the Talking Heads are a different group).
We get our first good glimpse at the some of the human leads. First, Lilly Singh as Nora, the record producer helping the band…
…and Tahj Mowry as “Moog,” who looks like he has a recording studio set up in a basement maybe. Lots of colorful lights and lava lamps!
A quick scene at Nora and Hannah’s house. If you were at New York Comic Con, you caught a sneak peak at the whole scene (which we summarized for you here!). Silly Animal, that’s not a W; it’s clearly the letter 12!
The Mayhem Van is hitting the road. Be careful of those giant words, I hear insurance companies don’t cover accidents involving onscreen text.
Another cameo! This time, it’s DJ Zedd, with whom the Mayhem attempt a collab. Poor Animal is so befuddled by the drum pad.
And the cameos continue! There’s Ziggy Marley (who you may remember from Muppet Treasure Island‘s “Love Power”), and then Desiigner doing some rapping with Lips…
…and then it’s deadmau5, who has inspired some incredible headgear for Floyd, Animal, Dr. Teeth and Zoot.
Oh hey, the Mayhem! I almost didn’t recognize them without their giant mouse heads.
Aw, Animal loves his bunnies! Good to know there’s going to be some other kinds of Muppets in this outside of the band.
Janice can levitate. Sure, why not.
Animal’s a TikTok sensation! I’m proud of him. I’ve never accomplished anything.
I love this shot of Animal smashed into one of his drums.
There’s Saara Chaudry as Nora’s younger sister, Hannah. We don’t see a lot of her in this trailer, but there she is!
At New York Comic Con last fall, we heard about a scene where all the Muppets were stuffed into Nora’s tiny car, and this looks like what they described. I hope they cracked a window!
The Mayhem somehow causes a Twitter feud with various music fandoms, which means some more cameos! We get Nicole Beyer as the leader of what appears to be Beyoncé’s Bey-Hive, Rachel Bloom as one of Taylor Swift’s Swifties, and Jack McBrayer as…Jared Leto’s Joker? I’m not really sure. But I’m extremely concerned for Lips when they grab him out of the van. He’s very delicate!
Oh hey, it’s Anders Holm! He’s in this show much more than the other celebrities, so it’s weird he’s only in like this one shot in the trailer.
Nora, Moog, and the band are out in the desert with a fire. Just like in The Muppet Movie! But wait, in that movie, the band came to save the Muppets. Does this mean the Muppets will save the band this time? Probably not.
Janice is in the hospital?! She finally will know what it’s like to be on the other end of the operating table after all those Vet’s Hospital sketches.
It’s Captain Stubing! Naw, just kidding. That’s Dr. Teeth. I know that. Who’s saying I don’t??
Muppets really look great out in the real world, don’t they? But I gotta say, that is not a very flattering shirt on Lips. Sorry, not sorry.
You want more celebrity cameos? We got ’em out the wazoo! There’s Cheech and Chong, Ke$ha, Morgan Freeman dressed as Zoot, Charlamagne Tha God, Animal’s anger management teacher Kristen Schall, Ben Schwartz, Sofia Carson, DJ Steve Aoki, Muppets Tonight alumn Paula Abdul, and finally his high holy weirdness himself, Alfred Yankovic.
VR Mayhem, I’d watch and/or play that!
Animal is a hibachi chef! If you think about it, a hibachi grill is almost like a drum set, but for food. Kinda. Sorta. Not really. I have no idea what I’m talking about.
The trailer ends with a literal cliffhanger, as the Mayhem’s van (with Animal hanging onto the front bumper) is teetering over a cliff. My goodness! What’s gonna happen????!?!?
But wait, that’s not quite the cliffhanger, ’cause there’s more! Good Morning America premiered a shorter version of the trailer with a couple of alternate shots, including the following:
The Mayhem performing a musical number at the beach. A Muppet beach party? They should make an album of that too!
Then we have Nora in front of a cork board setting up the tracklist for the Mayhem’s album. The titles we can make out clearly are “Can You Picture That?” (which we already knew was coming), “Rockin’ Robin” (which they previously performed on The Muppet Show, but this will no doubt be a new version), “Shack It Up” (a new song maybe?), and “What Momma Don’t Know” (another original?). What could the other eight tracks possibly be???
We’ll find out when all 10 episodes drop on Disney+ on May 10th! Wow, what a plug!
Click here to get excited by a fork on the Tough Pigs forum!
By Shane Keating
