CinemaCon, the annual convention of movie theatre owners, has begun to rival the better known Comic-Con in the exclusive footage stakes, with plenty of showreels, sneak peeks and star power on show at this year’s event. From Spider-Man to War of the Planet of the Apes, here are some of the highlights, and what we learned from them.

Spider-Man: Homecoming has the webslinger swinging again

By all rights, no one should be getting too excited about a third Spider-Man reboot in five years, but the new wall-crawler’s sparkling cameo in last year’s Captain America: Civil War helped to lasso long-term fans and reel them in for Homecoming. The most important thing about the new trailer is its suggestion that Tom Holland’s green and untried Spidey won’t be lumbered with villain overload, the storytelling flub that put an end to the careers of his two predecessors. His only target, from what we can see, is Michael Keaton’s nefarious Vulture, who already looks capable of proving the nastiest Spidey nemesis since Willem Dafoe’s pop-eyed Green Goblin.

Holland’s banter with the excellent Jacob Batalon (playing geeky best friend Ned Leeds) recalls Matthew Vaughn’s splendid Kick-Ass, and I loved the way we get to see Spider-Man’s suit click into battle mode. A little warning, though, for those who like their superhero fare unspoiled: the new trailer does appear to give away much of the movie’s essential plot. Spider-Man: Homecoming is due for release in July.

It and Stranger Things have formed a mutual appreciation society

Ironic that Andrés Muschietti’s adaptation of Stephen King’s horror classic should be benefiting from the ongoing, Stranger Things-inspired fascination with all things 80s, given that the Netflix show would never have existed if its creators, the Duffer brothers, had not been turned down for the It job by Warner Bros a few years back. Mama director Muschietti has even opportunistically cast Finn Wolfhard, aka Stranger Things’ determined pre-teen Mike Wheeler, as It’s Richie Tozier.

The two-part 1990 miniseries adaptation of King’s novel is, frankly, not nearly as good as you might remember, hampered by a deeply average cast and unspeakably cheap special effects. Yet Tim Curry’s Pennywise the Clown became something of an icon nonetheless. Bill Skarsgard’s take on the character may be terrifying when glimpsed in a dirty drain, conjuring awful visions of defenceless kids being carried down into the darkness, but Curry managed to scare the living daylights out of us in the full glare of a brightly lit room. Still, the trailer boasts the right blend of nostalgia for small-town America and freaky glimpses of horror beneath the streets to have us looking forward to It: Part 1 – The Losers’ Club coming to multiplexes this September.

Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Sequel is taking aim at Trump

With footage of melting ice caps that resembles something out of Roland Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow, Al Gore is back to take on Donald Trump and his pals in the anti-green lobby. Taking no prisoners from the outset, Gore reminds us he was heavily criticised for predicting, in his 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, that the combination of rising sea levels and increasingly destructive storms might lead to the flooding of New York’s 9/11 memorial site, then points out this actually happened six years later, in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Employing powerful rhetoric, Gore excoriates Trump for his environmental policies, and the trailer’s debut comes as the US president has just signed an executive order rescinding various regulations put in place by Barack Obama’s administration. An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power comes to cinemas this July … provided we’ve not already sunk beneath the waves.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is a digital space opera carnival

The jury remains out on Cara Delevingne’s ability to light up the big screen after her turn as villain the Enchantress in the lamentable Suicide Squad. Still, Luc Besson has handed the sometime model an even more high-profile role in his hugely ambitious space epic. She will play Laureline, the sleek and oh-so-chic partner of time-travelling hero Valerian in the long-running French comic book series by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières. At first glance, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets’ sumptuously imagined all-digital alien world looks like the most CGI-heavy sci-fi adaptation since the bad old days of the Star Wars prequels. There are also hints of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, The Matrix sequels and even the unfairly derided John Carter, as well as the inevitable Avatar comparisons. All this is hardly a shock, since the Valerian comics helped inspire pretty much every Hollywood space opera effort in the last 40 years.

At first glance, Besson doesn’t seem quite sure if he wants to dazzle us with imagery or convince us he’s not really taking any of this too seriously. But Delevingne seems well cast as Laureline, a study in graceful insouciance, while Dane DeHaan’s take on Valerian makes a welcome antidote to Hollywood’s typically lantern-jawed action heroes. Will audiences buy into this Gallic-inspired space opera? We’ll find out in May.

Andy Serkis’s Caesar is the creepy star of War for the Planet of the Apes

Given Matt Reeves has been handed the keys to the Batmobile, there’s surely a risk that this could be the director’s last turn as Planet of the Apes’ reigning alpha male. If so, the new trailer suggests he’s ready to go out on a chest-beating, pant-hooting high. Andy Serkis’s Caesar the ape is such a singular creation that it may be decades before the British mo-cap stalwart gets his real dues: this time he’s taking on Woody Harrelson’s fascistic Colonel, the latest human bad guy to want to wipe out all traces of the intelligent ape community first introduced in 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Mainstream cinema may still be pretty reluctant to challenge the west’s increasing xenophobia, to imagine the view from the other side of Donald Trump’s 40-foot fence. But Caesar and his pals make a fabulous metaphor for our fear of the other – even if seeing such obvious humanity in the eyes of animals remains a deeply chilling experience. Reeves’ movie arrives in July.