The Fantastic Four vs. Superman vs. Wes Anderson vs. M3gan: 10 Items to Consider Going Into the 2025 Summer Movie Season

With this week’s premiere of Thunderbolts (or, to use the film’s apparently proper title, Thunderbolts*), the 2025 summer movie season has officially begun. Is this cause for celebration or alarm? At this point, it’s tough to make a call. I tend to think of the early stages of a summer movie season in much the way I think about the early weeks of baseball season: it’s best to remain optimistic that this year will at least go better than the last. (I don’t root for a team that’s experienced much in the way of sustained success of late.)

The ideal summer movie season, especially in an era of play-it-safe studio product in which the very habit of moviegoing threatens to fall out of fashion, is one filled with memorable films that become part of a broader cultural conversation. Last summer’s biggest hit was Inside Out 2, a perfectly OK bit of Pixar water-treading. The best wide-release summer film was Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, a financial flop. So there’s room for improvement. As the weather starts to warm up and the multiplexes (hopefully) start to become crowded, here are a few items to consider:

1. 2025 will be a health check for the Marvel Cinematic Universe
In the 11-year stretch between 2008 and 2019, Marvel could seemingly do no wrong. Sure, some MCU movies were better than others, but most were pretty good (and a few really good) and all contributed to an ingenious bit of cinematic structural engineering that climaxed with Avengers: Endgame. But that was a while ago, way back at the conclusion of what Marvel dubbed “Phase Three” of its ongoing project. Since then, the MCU has been plagued with films of hit-or-miss quality (with more misses than hits), reconsidered plans (some tied to Jonathan Majors’ abuse charges), and smacked into apparent dead ends. (Will we ever learn if Dane Whitman is ready to wield the Ebony Blade? Do we care?)

For those keeping track, Thunderbolts*, which arrives a few weeks after the already-forgotten Captain America: Brave New World, is the final entry of the MCU’s Phase Five. Fantastic Four: First Steps, set for release July 25, will be the beginning of Phase Six, with a new Avengers film, Avengers: Doomsday, following next May ahead of Avengers: Secret Wars. No matter what happens, barring an unlikely financial catastrophe, the MCU will be with us for the foreseeable future. The question is whether or not it will ever be the assured, widely popular entity it used to be, a kind of popcorn lingua franca spoken by grown-ups and kids alike, or become an increasingly niche operation for veteran fans. At this point, the MCU feels a bit like Steel Wheels/Voodoo Lounge/Bridges to Babylon-era Rolling Stones, when the group’s big hits were behind it and attempts to appear hip and new looked kind of embarrassing, but the sheer size and of the operation was so overwhelming that nostalgia and momentum kept the band going. And every once in a while, the group could still turn out a banger.

Will Thunderbolts* change that? (And here I must add an asterisk of my own: by the time this piece publishes I will have seen the movie but as I write this I have not.) Will Fantastic Four? Is the return of Joe and Anthony Russo for those Avengers films a sign that Marvel and the Russos have realized they work better together than apart? By the end of the summer, we should have a better idea.

2. Maybe DC is the new MCU
Look, I don’t want to beat up, once again, on DC’s past superhero movie efforts. What became known as the DC Extended Universe had some highlights (the first Wonder Woman, the not-bad Blue Beetle, and handful of others) but struggled to escape the grimdark tone set by Zack Snyder with 2013’s Man of Steel. Scrapping that and starting over was a smart and probably necessary move.

Warner Bros. brought in James Gunn and producing partner Peter Safran to press the reset button, with Gunn himself helming Superman, the first entry in an all-new, all-different slate of DC films. Will it work? That’s a huge TBD, but Gunn’s funny, heartfelt Guardians of the Galaxy films were, along with Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther, some of the few MCU projects that played like personal statements that weren’t entirely beholden to the Marvel house style. Gunn’s lone contribution to the DCEU, The Suicide Squad (not to be confused with Suicide Squad) was similarly winningly irreverent (as was Peacemaker, its TV spin-off). The signs appear positive, but it’s one thing to show up and make some cool movies, another to run an entire cinematic universe.

3. Wes Anderson now creates alternative summer blockbusters
It’s not that Wes Anderson has changed the way he makes movies. No one makes more instantly recognizable movies than Anderson and that seems unlikely to change. But the time of year when we see them has shifted. Consider this: in the stretch that spanned from Anderson’s 1998 breakthrough Rushmore to 2009’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, his movies reliably appeared in the fall. Released in May 2012, Moonrise Kingdom broke with that pattern. Then Anderson’s movies started to be released at somewhat unpredictable points on the calendar: The Grand Budapest Hotel and Isle of Dogs were both March releases. The French Dispatch arrived in U.S. theaters in October. But Asteroid City, released in June 2023, proved that an Anderson movie could find an appreciative audience looking for blockbuster counter-programming and The Phoenician Scheme, out May 30th, looks likely to repeat that pattern. Ari Aster’s Eddington, due July 18th, similarly looks poised to sweep up those not in the mood for a revival of I Know What You Did Last Summer a few weeks later.

4. Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning could be the end of Tom Cruise’s action era.