What's with all these gosh darn remakes? A year of film. 2025.

2025 and the post-writer strike money race to restore the industries wavering budget.

Image source: Yahoo. Finally, Superman is free from the dark clutches of Zack Snyder. Thank goodness.

It’s been a few months short of 2 years since the 2023 writers strike, long, grueling months, weeks, and days of low-quality productions, and movies that don’t baffle, but bore their audiences into a sleeping trance. Although some impressive films have still managed to sneak out here and there, most of the movies released in this new year aren’t set to the same standard as their predecessors. Now why is that? Why are studios so keen on releasing movies that are either unfinished, uninspired, or just plain unappealing? Well, that’s because of a simple motto, a motto that represents the building blocks of Hollywood, and the film industry as a whole. Risk aversion, sweet sweet risk aversion. What puts all the cash into the filmmakers pockets, and doesn’t put hundreds of millions of dollars at stake. Because of this aversion, fans suffer, when will it get better? Literally, as soon as Hollywood has a chance to sit down, and think things through. 

The film industry lost a good chunk of its funding during, and even after the writers strike, totalling to a whopping 5-6.5 billion dollars in revenue and budget money. That’s because when a strike happens, the people on strike stop working, all of them, banned together, just stop. So when writers stop writing, movies stop getting made, and producers have to bend over backwards to work out the kinks of their films, or, they throw them down the trash chute altogether. When a movie’s thrown down the trash chute, no one’s coming to dig in there and get it back, so what comes to replace it, the good ol reliable. Popular Intellectual Properties. You remember Superman? What about Jurassic Park? This is what brings in the cash, why risk releasing an original project when you can just make a sequel, or reboot an already multi-million dollar franchise? Well that’s exactly it, it’s way easier to do that. Especially if you're trying to cover your losses. 

So here we are, 2025, a year packed with remakes and sequels as far as the eye can see. James Gunn’s Superman, Disney’s Lilo & Stitch, Gareth Edwards Jurassic World: Rebirth, Marvel’s Fantastic Four: First Steps, Snow White, 28 Years Later, Tron: Ares, Karate Kid: Legends, Predator Badlands, Final Destination: Bloodlines, Nobody 2 (they didn’t even try with that one), Zootopia 2, Megan 2.0, The Accountant 2, Mortal Kombat 2, Den of Thieves 2, The Bad Guys 2, Gladiator II (late 2024 but still), it never ends! Even the original films, like The Monkey, aren’t even original, they’re pretty much the same thing as these movies ( a rip-off of final destination). Now with all that being said, yes a portion of these began production in years before 2023, that’s true. Yet, is this all just some coincidence? No way, this is Hollywood trying to make some buck back, and they will go to any lengths to do so. I mean really? Bad Guys 2? We’re that desperate?

The heavy weight of the writers strike isn’t the only thing keeping the industry in an uncertain state, but it is also the fact of the Covid-19 Pandemic, which caused major release and production delays, as well as financial catastrophe. The lack of movie theaters made a majority of projects straight to digital, which always underperformed compared to theatrical releases. All of this combined has left the state of the movie industry a complete mess, packed full of flops, horrible movies no one asked for, and the occasional surprise. The most recent good project I could think of which represented an original IP was Sinners, a 2025 film directed by Ryan Coogler. It was a vampire flick, but one of the best I’ve ever seen, and most people agree, sitting at a comfortable 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 7.9/10 on IMDB. Featuring a stellar cast, great music, and an atmosphere which sucks the boredom out of you like a vampire, Sinners was a true example of a well-done, artistic original piece of film. Embodying the very aspects so many companies have failed to keep in mind throughout their productions. 

So there you have it, a good movie that came out this year. What about the other stuff? Well, there was a lot that wasn’t so good. Like for instance, the Snow White remake, destined to fail no matter what it did, and The Electric State, which was one of the biggest financial flops of all time! Why are these movies bad? Because their companies don’t care. Neither Netflix, which stands responsible for the failure of Electric State, nor Disney, who unfortunately released Snow White, put enough effort into their films to actually make them watchable. Electric state was an uninspired slog of a film, while Snow White, an unwatchable travesty undeserving of production. From this point, we can branch into some more flops, like Until Dawn, releasing to bad reception and little interest, along with Death of a Unicorn. What do these two have in common? Not enough time in the oven, and little effort as far as originality goes. 

Tying Death of Unicorn into the mix also opens another window, celebrity dependance. Electric state is responsible for this too, putting all their cards into Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt, rather than the actual plot to the movie. Celebrity overuse is a problem currently plaguing Hollywood, and leading to some flops, and annoyance from fans. Sometimes, a studio will claim to have an “original movie,” and to avoid losing money, they’ll grab their most popular, recognizable actors. Chris Pratt for instance, or Jenna Ortega (Death of a Unicorn). “Hey look it's the celebrity you know!” is what they’re looking for, and although yes, it does work a lot of times, you can see it in Gladiator II with Denzel Washingtonm (I mean who isn’t coming to see him, he’s the best), a mediocre movie, but pulled through to success by this highly popular actor. It used to work wonders for bad movies in the past, but now, having a well-known celebrity isn’t a sure thing anymore, and that's because the film industry uses them as pawns for financial gain way too much. 

You look at a movie like Red One, directed by Jake Kasdan, and featuring the likeness of Dwayne Johnson (the Rock), Chris Evans, J.K. Simmons, and even Lucy Liu. A Christmas themed action movie with all your favorite celebs, wow, sounds like a sure cash grabber right? Nope, it flopped, because no one in their right mind after seeing that first trailer had any desire to see it. Except for Dwayne Johnson's die-hard fans, who probably saw Black Adam too (flop), another example of celebrity usage gone wrong. No more are the days of throwing Chris Pratt or Will Smith on the cover of your movie and raking in a ton of money, now, you pull up a bad film with some A-list actors, you're getting what you deserve for the effort you put in. No cheats this time. Of course that’s not always the case, as again seen by Gladiator II, which was a relatively successful film. Yet how long is this going to last? With the wavering interest in these poor-quality films being just as low as the producers insults to their fans, will popular celebrities be able to save them? No, they won’t. Instead, make more good films. 

Back on track to sequels, this year is going to see a lot of familiar faces, however, behind each is its own set of controversy. Look at Fantastic Four, a franchise plagued by horrible movies and lackluster theater performance, especially Fantastic 4, 2015, or as the fans/haters call it, Fan4stic. Mocking it's laughably terrible poster. In this new attempt to push these classic heroes, Marvel is bringing out one of their biggest villains, Galactus, the Devourer of Worlds, who will debut into the MCU when this movie releases, July 25th 2025. Along with him, Silver Surfer, or his wife rather, since they are using a lesser known version of the original character named Shalla-Bal, who has appeared as the silver surfer in a few pages of the Earth X comic series. Fans of course aren’t the most pleased with seeing her instead of the iconic original Silver Surfer, but I myself am more concerned with the atrocious CGI monstrosity that is supposed to be her character. With unattuned reflections and pasty features, she looks more like a silver blob than a highly skilled alien combatant. The rest of the CGI doesn’t look so sharp either, leading many to speculate this movie's forthcoming critical failure, which could very well be the case. For the Fantastic Fours sake, this movie needs to do well, as a matter of fact, that whole post Endgame Avengers franchise sort of pivots off of this films success, as it ties directly in with Thunderbolts*, and the upcoming Avengers Doomsday. 

On the topic of superhero movies, another highly anticipated film releasing earlier in the year on July 11th, is James Gun’s Superman. The DCU’s come back to the world of film. After years of flops and disappointments, DC has decided to drop their original cinematic universe, and begin to replace it with a new, perfected version. This, much like Zack Snyder's first entry to the dark, depressing gloominess of the older saga, is going to open things up with DC’s second most popular character, Superman.

 Finally, Kal-El is freed from the sad, depressed version of Superman portrayed by Henry Cavil, the MVP of those horrible films. Instead of being moppy, gritty, and utterly joyless, this new Superman, played by David Corenswet, is going to be colorful, optimistic, and ambitious. That sounds great right? Well it might be, if DC doesn’t ruin things again. Superman 2025 has a lot going for it, but the trailers showcase a movie that seemed to carry with it the potential to be over-the-top and possibly a disaster. Much like Fantastic 4: First steps, if this Superman movie fails, then the DCU is seriously just going to be Batman and no one else. Because that's the only superhero who’s actually had a good film in that whole mess. 

This year is sort of the, “we mess this up it's over” year if you really look at it. Jurassic World Rebirth is coming, it has a lot to make up for, if it bombs, no one’s going to see another. Lilo & Stitch had to come in and save the day after Snow White, and now we have Fantastic Four and Superman hoping to rescue their franchises. Both of them sort of helped out by Thunderbolts and the Batman. Although yes, this year is sequel mayhem, it's also a year that could re-establish the franchises we know and love. 

Maybe Superman will be the next big deal DC needs, maybe Fantastic Four will finally be an IP people want to see, maybe Jurassic World Rebirth will save the franchise, maybe Tron Ares will bring Tron back to life (Jared Letto’s in it so don’t get your hopes up). With the writers strike, Covid-19 pandemic, and for DC, simply horrible management, it's time for these companies to build themselves a better foundation to push off of, and revitalize their million-dollar movie mega-giants. If you're someone that misses the old days, all your favorite franchises are pretty much coming back this year, and that to many isn’t a bad thing. I mean, even Shrek’s making a re-appearance. Again though, his new design is a little troubling, to say the least. He fits the theme of the colossal redesign-era of all major franchises and characters. 

Yes, original content is less of a norm this year, and we’re watching a lot of recurring stuff, but at the same time, maybe this will open up a new doorway for Hollywood, and help heal the wounds of financial loss. The return of other franchises have already begun to pave the way for the next batch, Final Destination: Bloodlines, a prime example of a formerly stagnating series coming back with a bang, literally. We’re seeing movies that probably aren't going to get another chance to return because of this low-point, even Tron is back. Everything sort of ended after 2020, all our favorite stories, the rebooted Jurassic World, the DCU, Marvel sort of, all the things that were new, are being replaced by a new generation of hopefully better remakes. With all that being said, the only remakes I denounce are the Disney ones, because they stink and should no longer be produced, but I won’t go off on a tangent about that here. For now, let's hope for the best, and cross our fingers as the future of cinema paves its way into our lives. Eye’s closed, lets hope it's a better one.