San Diego's Comic-Con International has become a huge deal in Hollywood in recent years, with studios falling over themselves to pique the interest of the legions of comic-book fans who attend. The good news is that you don't have to travel to southern California to get a taste of 2014's blockbuster wannabes: a slew of trailers that debuted inside the San Diego Convention Centre's gargantuan Hall H have now hit the web – and there's no need to dress up like Xena the warrior princess to watch them.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

First up is the debut teaser for The Hobbit: The Battle of The Five Armies, the final instalment in Peter Jackson's epic three-part adaptation of JRR Tolkien's whimsical fantasy fable. And boy are they hammering home the fact that this is the last time we will ever get to see the Kiwi film-maker's take on Middle Earth (until Warner Bros decides to greenlight a 12-part movie marathon based on Farmer Giles of Ham).

Part two, The Desolation of Smaug, seemed to consist mainly of anatomically complicated elf-dwarf inter-species romance and an awful lot of Bilbo throwing himself around the dragon's lair like a kid in a Fort Knox soft play area. But The Battle of the Five Armies, lest we be in any doubt, will be a far more serious and sombre affair, designed to link the new trilogy to the moodier Lord of the Rings. The trailer opens with our Hobbity hero promising to remember the dead, before descending into scenes of Lake-town's devastation and the coming battle for the Lonely Mountain.

Luke Evans's Bard the Bowman is once again front and centre as the de facto leader of the story's human faction, and there will be prizes for anyone who can explain why Orlando Bloom's Legolas the elf is still hanging around looking pretty – not to mention how Cate Blanchett's Galadriel manages to show up.

Like its predecessors, part three looks set to irritate Tolkienistas and bring joy to the hearts of more open-minded cinemagoers in equal measures. Martin Freeman, it goes without saying, will be absolutely superb. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies lands in UK cinemas on 12 December, with the US following suit five days later.

• What would you add to The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies?

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1

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From one movie property that has been stretched, Gollum-like, far beyond its natural lifespan, to another. The debut full trailer for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 gives us the late Philip Seymour Hoffman as rebellion leader Plutarch Heavensbee and introduces Game of Thrones' Natalie Dormer as the undercut-sporting Cressida, as well as updating us on the latest stage in poor Katniss Everdeen's descent into full-on breakdown territory. Jennifer Lawrence now plays the role with a thousand-yard stare so convincing that it's easy to see how the dystopian saga long ago surpassed its literary source material – a rare achievement. Still, the decision to split the weak final novel in Suzanne Collins's young adult trilogy into two movies may come back to sting the film-makers like a swarm of angry tracker jackers. In the books, there isn't even anything remotely arena-like going on until the final few chapters: Lawrence could be in for an awful lot of looking brave but pensive. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 arrives in the US on 20 November and the UK a day later.

• Why Hunger Games 3 will kill one Mockingjay with two stones

Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For

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Next up is a new red-band trailer for Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller's stylish hyper-noir sequel provides more guns, extra gore and plenty strip-club cavorting. It's predatory femme fatale overload, with Eva Green's deceitful Ava Lord, a newly hard-boiled Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba) and Rosario Dawson's Gail (not to mention Lady Gaga) all making an appearance. For the fellas, Mickey Rourke's Marv is inexplicably back to help Josh Brolin's Dwight McCarthy with a little lady trouble, while Joseph Gordon Levitt's chance-taking Johnny looks to have got on the wrong side of Powers Boothe's fabulously evil Senator Roark.

The comic book adaptation is perfect territory for anyone who has ever enjoyed Double Indemnity or Chinatown, but … you know, really wondered why they couldn't have had a few more explosions and a little more cleavage. Sin City: A Dame to Kill For hits US cinemas on 22 August, with the UK getting the film three days later.

• Sin City sequel poster with Eva Green deemed too risqué by US censor

Horns

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Finally, here's our first full look at Daniel Radcliffe in Horns, another of the British actor's post-Harry Potter career moves that seems custom-designed to help us to forget he was ever a pasty little 10-year-old in John Lennon glasses. Radcliffe plays Ig, a young man struggling to cope with the untimely death of his girlfriend in suspicious circumstances, who one day spouts a set of impressive devil-like horns on his bonce that give him insight into humanity's darkest desires. Based on the fantasy novel by Joe Hill, this looks like one of those teen-orientated movies you really wish had been directed by David Cronenberg as a full-on body horror in which Radcliffe slowly metamorphosises into a hideous creature from the seventh layer of Hades. French director Alexandre Aja is best known for throwaway horror knockoffs such as 2006's The Hills Have Eyes remake and Piranha 3D, but Horns's unusual conceit and Radcliffe's burgeoning gift for comedy might just throw up a few laughs.

My colleague Henry Barnes was none-too-impressed at Toronto last September, mind, likening the movie to a "high-concept beer advert – breezily stylish, memorable in its time, but a bit too full of gas". Horns hits cinemas on both sides of the Atlantic on Halloween, 31 October, which perhaps partially explains the long wait since its festival-season debut.

• Daniel Radcliffe takes his career by the Horns

• This article was launched on 29 July 2014 with an incorrect trailer link for the new Hunger Games film. This has now been amended.