Tag: wrap up

Year in Review 2025

Posted on by fenrisfil

2025 was not a great year for the box office. Falling about in line with the disappointing 2024 box office. Much like previous years a handful of successes propped up a large number of flops. But movie theaters have a lot to worry about, especially with the pending purchase of Warner Brothers by Netflix. This years big winners at the box office include “Zootopia 2”, “Lilo & Stitch”, “A Minecraft Movie”, “Jurassic World: Rebirth”, “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle”, and unsurprisingly “Avatar: Fire and Ash”. All of which drew in more than $700m globally. With $200m production budgets common for modern blockbusters, that means the break even point for a lot of movies is around $600m (Due to the theaters cut and Prints and Advertising costs). So $700m and above is usually a sign of solid profit.

The one exception with that is Avatar which costs so much it’s break even is around one billion. At the time of writing it hasn’t achieved that, but it is on track to join the only three movies to hit that point this year (“Lilo and Stitch”, “Zootopia 2” and the Chinese movie “Ne Zha 2”). The problem James Cameron has however is drop off. Specifically the drop off trend of the Avatar movies in general. See, James wants to put out two more Avatar movies and both will need over $1b to draw even, likely more knowing how ambitious Cameron is. That means if you track the drop off from the first to second to third you can estimate if a fourth or fifth movie is likely to be financially successful. That places the target closer to $1.8 billion. Currently, that looks achievable, but we will have to wait and see.

Bombs Away!

Box office losers this year includes all Marvel’s superhero offerings, all of which lost considerable money. Surprisingly Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning was also a narrow miss at the box office, entirely due to its inflated budget. A good lesson to learn is any franchise can run out of steam. Cruise wasn’t wrong to want a big send off though, so I wouldn’t call it a mistake. The movie was decent but could have been better. Other notable failures this year includes the pro-Antifa adventure “One Battle After Another”, the pretty solid John Wick spin off “Ballerina” and the horribly disappointing “Mickey 17”. On top of that a whole host of non superhero Disney movies including: “Predator: Badlands”, “Elio”, “Tron: Ares”, and of course Disney’s live action “Snow White”.

Disney’s year has about 3/10 for success. Good job for them their three hits are among the biggest of the year. There are a few debatable successes this year too. Probably the most debated is “Superman”. People debate if it is good, why it is or isn’t, if it is made or lost money and if Warner is happy with it. In my view, the movie is good. More objectively speaking the movie is a success. I know some will disagree, but we are very obviously in a period of superhero fatigue, marvel failed with every outing this year and DC has been on a long run of complete and total box office disaster. So being the number 3 film of the year for Domestic box office and blowing most of the recent DC movies out of the water (Everything but “The Batman” and it was close to that) can definitely be seen as a success. David Corenswet even got a collective thumbs up from all the audience, positive or negative.

When In Doubt, Scare Them!

While Hollywood struggles and superhero movies continue to sink, horror is once again thriving this year. “Sinners”, “The Conjuring: Last Rites”, “Weapons“, “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” and “Final Destination: Bloodlines” all swept up at the box office. Meanwhile “Frankenstein” is looking like a strong contender for multiple Oscars. “28 Years Later” and “The Monkey” also did well (For their budget). It’s worth remembering of course with horror we’re not talking about these films hitting $1 billion or anything. The most successful horror of the year, “Sinners” made $367m globally, that’s less than the least successful Marvel movie this year. But it’s all about net profit. Horror costs very little and reliably makes profit.

A few lower budget horrors managed to garner a lot of hype this year, those include “Talk to Me”, “Together” and “Good Boy“. All solid offerings, if a little over hyped. Hype kings this year for horror were easily “Sinners” and “Weapons”. These are the big horror winners of the year and the nice thing here is those are both original. Also-Ran’s in horror include the sequel’s “Black Phone 2” and “M3gan 2.0“, both of which suffered for trying to radically shift the type of film. Meanwhile, condemned to a direc-to-streaming release was horror love story “The Gorge“. Last honorable mention here is “Clown in a Cornfield”. While mild in its success, it possibly sneaks in this year as a future cult hit.

My Top Ten Movies of the Year

So what movies did I like most this year? Time for a top ten. Before I start though, two movies that narrowly missed the list, yet are worthy of mention are: “Caught Stealing” and “Roofman”. Both good movies, worth checking out.

  1. Nobody 2 – An unnecessary yet fun sequel. At no time do you feel the heroes are at risk, but it’s fun watching them take apart a local crime syndicate.
  2. The Amateur – Remi Malek showing off his talent in this interesting revenge thriller. Not quite good enough to be a classic, but a good story and an original approach.
  3. Deathstalker – A cheap, fun fantasy movie that knows exactly what it is. From the makers of “Psycho Goreman” (2020) and “The Void” (2016). Technically a remake.
  4. Spinal Tap: The End Continues – While not the classic of the original, this was the film that got the most laughs out of me this year. Especially recommended for fellow musicians.
  5. Black Bag – British Spy thriller that spins a web while also focusing on the simple question of how do spouses that are both in the spy game ever trust each other?
  6. Weapons – My horror of the year. Not without flaws, but when it’s good it is really good. Plus, always nice to see scary witches for change (Instead of reduced to feminist symbols).
  7. Superman – Some may dislike me putting this in my top ten, but I really did enjoy the movie. It is my favorite Superman movie that doesn’t have Christopher Reeve in.
  8. Warfare – Easy to forget this one, yet it was a fairly unique and well made move about… well, warfare! Points for originality, being hard hitting and not time wasting.
  9. F1 – While this does do justice to the F1, it’s a story that could be set in any sport. Perhaps not the most original story, but it works extremely well!
  10. Frankenstein – My view on this movie has diminished since I realized how much came straight from Bernie Wrightson’s graphic novel adaptation. That said, it’s still my movie of the year. It looks fantastic and while it drags a bit, it ends strong.

Worst of the Year?

The advantage of not being a big shot critic is you don’t have to watch everything. As a result I’m not going to even try a bottom ten of the year. But I will note a few things I found particular disappointing. First of which, right at the start of the year was Blumhouse’s “Wolf Man“. A movie so bad, I had to watch another seven Werewolf movies to get the bad taste out of my mouth. It’s ironic that the star, Julia Garner also ended up in my top then. The next biggest disappointment was a movie I’d been looking forward to for a couple of years, “Mickey 17“. Perhaps I expected too much from Bong Joon Ho, but this was a science fiction movie that seemed to go out of it’s way to fail on everything it promised. The first act of the film was the only part of value and that was so heavily utilized for the trailers I felt I’d already seen it.

Another movie that disappointed me this year was “Fantastic Four: First Steps“. I’ve not been watching Marvel recently, but I heard from a few people this was good. I didn’t share that opinion once I watched it. As much as people like to claim they don’t, superheroes do need their origin story. It doesn’t matter how they got their powers, what matters is what defines them as heroes. When they skip it, the heroes don’t feel right. That’s the case here, sure they got the look sort of right, but the personalities and the dynamic between them was off. Add to that the story took a long time to kick into gear and this ended up a bad marvel movie.

Things That Aren’t Fantastic

Fantastic Four wasn’t the worst Disney film this year. But I did fully watch it. Tron: Ares I tried to watch, but it was so bad I walked away part way through. This is not Tron and the thing is with such long gaps between entries in this franchise the three movies couldn’t really feel less related. At least Legacy tried to tie things together, this movie doesn’t even feel like an attempt at Tron. Also, there’s no Tron in this Tron film. He had only a cameo in Legacy, but at least he was there. I had no interest in Snow White and haven’t watched it at all, but I must acknowledge the movie has become legendary for how bad it is. But even that must take a back seat to “War of the Worlds”, a movie that brought everyone together in their mockery of how bad it was.

Over to the world of TV, I have to express how disappointing this last season of Stranger Things has been. Season Four felt epic and cinematic. It more than made up for the slightly lackluster seasons 2 and 3. Season Four even felt like a series conclusion, right until the epilogue. But then with Season five they seem to be trying to reinvent the wheel. So much of this season feels artificial and forced and the biggest mistake on show is taking so many minor background characters and elevating them to the main cast. This has created an unfortunate character bloat that has diminished the roles of series favorites. More disappointing though was “Alien: Earth” that promised much, but delivered a wrecking ball to the franchise. Worst of all they reduced the Aliens to pet monsters.

Second Chance Saloon

So between the best and worst are a lot of things that may have either been given a bad rap or just slipped under the radar for most folk. First movie I feel the need to bring up is “The Running Man“. This movie suffered from some reviewers Arnie fetish and inability to see beyond a movie with Arnold in being about the man and not the story. The original story was by Stephen King and was very loosely adapted for the Schwarzenegger movie. It deserved a second version, especially given it’s been 38 years. Many didn’t give it a chance. Now, the movie does have issues but I had a lot of fun with it. Worth a chance on streaming in my view.

Another movie worth checking out is “Ballerina”, the John Wick spin off that just couldn’t stir up any interest. The film itself is actually pretty good. Not top ten material, but worth a watch. Unlike “Furiosa” (2024) this movie actually features the character the franchise is named after and in more than just a cameo. However it’s still a new character as the lead and it seems an odd decision to even make the film when the last two John Wick film went out of it’s way to build up characters that could be spun off. The movie also struggled with the stigma attached to female led action films. To put it nicely, too many of these movies are made purely for female empowerment, but that doesn’t sell itself to action movies mostly male audience.

Worth Viewing

A streaming movie I enjoyed more than I expected to was “Head of State”. John Cena and Idris Elba have good chemistry. While many were disappointed with “Electric State” and it definitely didn’t justify it’s budget, the movie is actually a solid family fantasy adventure and not a bad watch. Another movie that got slammed this year was “M3gan 2.0“, but I almost put that one on my top ten. I get the hate, the switch from horror/comedy to action/comedy was grating. I’m not sure I’d want to watch both movies together but I went in knowing the change and actually thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Give it a chance. Last movie to mention is “Locked” a very simple movie mostly featuring Bill Skarsgård locked in a car with Anthony Hoplkins taunting him. But those are two great actors and the movie is pretty decent.

Looking over to the world of television there’s less for me to talk about as I’m far more of a movie guy than a TV guy. However, I want to draw attention to the Japanese series “Last Samurai Standing”. This show went under most peoples radar but did manage enough of an audience to get renewed for season two. The story is a compelling blend of historic fantasy and gritty reality, with some very cool sword fights in between. I’d place the show part way between “Shogun” and “Into the Badlands”. I also thoroughly enjoyed the series “House of Guinness”, and not just because I’m a keen drinker of the stout itself. The show is edgy, compelling and mostly historically accurate (Well, more accurate than many shows anyway).

Happy New Year!

So that’s my wrap up. Before I sign off, here are some of the movies I’m looking forward to or I think may be of interest in general in 2026. I’ve put an asterisk on the ones I am most excited for. I’m only taking this list to July, after that schedules tend to change and those movies are yet to begin promotion.

  • January: “We Bury the Dead”.
  • February: **”Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die”.
  • March: *”The Bride”, **”Project Hail Mary”, “Ready or Not 2: Here I come”.
  • April: “Super Mario Galaxy”.
  • May: “Mortal Kombat 2”, “The Mandalorian and Grogu”.
  • June: *”Masters of the Universe”, “Supergirl”
  • July: *”Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey”, “Spider-Man: Brand New Day”

The movies I’m most looking forward to are “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” and “Project Hail Mary”, both come fairly early in the year and have had very good trailers. However, so did Mickey 17 last year, so we’ll see if they live up to expectations. Anyway, that’s it for 2025. Due to the costs of running this blog, this may be the last year I do a wrap up so I hope it has been interesting, entertaining or ideally both. Happy New Year and may 2026 bring you joy and success! Be seeing you!

Oh and credit to “Nano Banana” for the AI images! Silly name, great image generator.

The 2024 Wrap Up – Part Two

Posted on by fenrisfil

Welcome to part two of my annual wrap up looking at 2024. In this half I will give you the second half of my top ten movies of the year and look at how things have played out in the box office. I’ll also be encouraging you to give a second look at four movies that you may have marked down as “Not worth bothering with”.

Top Ten (Part Two)

First up, a couple more honourable mentions. A movie that really surprised me in 2024 was “In The Land Of Saints And Sinners“. There’s no getting around it, Liam Neeson has been making a lot of truly terrible movies of late. This one however was great and Neeson was back on top form. Another impressive comeback was Kevin Costner’s passion project “Horizon: An American Saga“. A long complex tale that would have been better served as a TV series, but was still quality cinema. Costner often self funds his projects and usually loses money with them, but no one can deny his dedication and passion.

Before I get on to my top five movies I want to shout out two 2024 movies I won’t get to see until 2025. Namely: Sonic 3 and Nosferatu. The first two Sonic movies were far better than I think anyone expected and I have no reason to think they will drop the ball now. Meanwhile Francis Eggers new horror movie hits theatres in the US on Christmas day. In the UK we get it Jan 1st 2025. So while Sonic my miss out on the list for both years, I suspect I may be justifying Nosferatu’s inclusion on my 2025 list instead. We will see. Early reviews have been glowing.

#5 Boy Kills World

Review (From a roundup) HERE. This is my fun cult movie of the year. A mixture of excessively violent action and comedy, done with the freedom of an independent movie aiming to be a cult classic. This is a revenge film about a deaf, mute played by Bill Skarsgård but with H. Jon Benjamin (Archer, Bob’s Burgers) as the voice in his head. Sadly the movie was marketed so poorly a lot of people are probably hearing about it for the first time in this article. It made only $3m against its $20m budget. However, cult movies like this tend to make up for their box office in the long term through streaming and physical media sales. So there is hope for it yet. If you like action comedies check this one out! This just about made a 7/10.

Rating: 7 out of 10.

#4 Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F

Legacy sequels usually are a disappointment. Even when they are decent, they tend to fall far short of the original films. Every now and then though we get one just about up to scratch. Perhaps not as good as the classics, but one that does feel part of the same conversation. Axel F was one of these. A very pleasant surprise, especially after the very disappointing legacy sequel to “Coming to America”. Eddie Murphy was back on form. The rest of the gang was back on form and the movie carried a lot of the same vibes while also not ignoring the massive time gap. This was a very solid 7/10.

Rating: 7 out of 10.

#3 Late Night With The Devil

Review (From a roundup) HERE. While perhaps not as original as many may think, it was original enough to stand out in the sea of modern horrors. The 70’s TV style felt authentic and they had fun playing the plot out through that medium. The movie reminded me a lot of “WNUF Halloween Special”, but slicker (Hence not finding it totally original). David Dastmalchian, a highly underrated actor, did a fantastic job in the lead and young Ingrid Torelli impressed as the possessed child. While I wasn’t surprised the movie was good, I was that it ended up my top horror of the year. Well done Shudder! Strong 7/10 for this.

Rating: 7 out of 10.

#2 The Wild Robot

Review (From a roundup) HERE. This was a shocker that really shouldn’t have been. When you realize this is from Dreamworks and Chris Sanders, the minds behind the original “How to Train Your Dragon” you realize expectations should have been high. Yet this flew under a lot of peoples radars for some reason. Perhaps because Lupita Nyong’o isn’t that big a star (Despite her talent). Perhaps because Pedro Pascal seems to be in everything and due to that also has no draw. But the truth is both of them did a superb job. But it’s the animation, the story and perhaps above all the humour that makes this an absolute classic. 7.5/10

Rating: 7.5 out of 10.

#1 Deadpool & Wolverine

Full review HERE. Speaking of humour, by far the funniest film of the year was Deadpool & Wolverine”. So despite the paper thin plot and obvious milking of nostalgia, this still ends up my movie of the year. The cast of heroes is excellent, including the surprise (And not so surprising) cameos. Aside from Emma Corrin, the villains were less impressive, but they did what they needed to. Right from the very start, the movie is outrageous, hilarious and action packed. It even manages to tell strong character stories, compensating largely for the weak plot. Those stories extend beyond the main two characters and makes each cameo feels worthwhile (Although one of them mostly for comedy…Don’t skip the post credit scene, that’s all I’m saying). This was an 8/10, even with the flaws.

Rating: 8 out of 10.

Second Chance Saloon

These days negativity about entertainment spreads like wildfire. There’s no getting around it, the studios have a PR problem and a terrible relationship with their fans. Part of that is because they have been strangely antagonistic and part is just their uninspired output. Most new movies or TV shows are filled with all the same modern cliches. Any criticism of the product is reacted to with insults and labels. So it’s understandable people are increasingly walking away from new shows, movies, franchises or even entire genres. Of course that means on occasion they don’t give a chance to something perhaps they may enjoy. So in this section I am going to recommend a few movies for a second chance.

Let’s get to the easier sells first. I want to mention a couple of fun movies that while not bothering my top ten, were entertaining and didn’t contain anything that anyone should find offensive. “Red One” quickly flopped at the box office, showing that neither The Rock nor Chris Evans are box office gold. Yet, this was a fun, well meaning action Christmas movie. The second to mention is Gladiator 2. This is a direct sequel to the original and an entertaining movie that attempts to offer a subversion of the plot from the first. Sadly some reviewers have thrown out the usual complaints: Bad CGI, ‘Member berries, rehash of the first film. None of those are anywhere near as bad as presented. The plot especially is mostly similar because it is a gladiator movie. Not too much variety in the genre.

Not For Everyone

So now we get on to the divisive movies. First up is Joker: Folie à Deux, this is a movie that got a savage backlash mostly from people that hadn’t seen the movie, but had heard things they didn’t like about it. It’s a subversive movie and a gritty, depressing neo-noir. It’s not a bad movie objectively speaking. Indeed, it is very well made. What it isn’t much of though, is fun. If you go in expecting a comic book movie, you will hate it. Especially true if you think this is the “Real” Joker. But if you like gritty, depressing neo-noir’s or can enjoy a movie for being well made, give it a chance. Personally, I’m not a fan of the musical stuff, but it wasn’t a deal breaker.

Second movie I want to mention is Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis. As you will learn in my review, it’s not a movie you can approach in a straight up way. You pretty much have to ignore the movies plot, take the subtext lightly and look deep at the subtext to the subtext or the metaphor under the metaphor. If you watch the movie thinking of it as being about Coppola himself and film making in general, it becomes a lot more interesting. It’s not for everyone though. Both these films are for true cinephiles. People at film school will probably appreciate them, but if you want to chill with a beer and some popcorn… Yeah, maybe don’t watch these. But then that’s where Red One and Gladiator II come in. So whatever kind of viewer you are, two of these films should be worth giving a chance to.

Box Office Breakdown

So finally we are on to the objective part of this round up. What movies actually made money. This year the top ten global box office contains ten franchise movies. Yep, not a single one of these is an original movie. This is pretty normal for these days and part of the reason why movies are starting to struggle. There isn’t enough effort put in by the studios to build new franchises. Not that there aren’t original movies, but they are usually lower budget, less pushed by the studios and often direct to streaming. Anyway here is the top ten in the global box office for the year 2024.

  1. Inside Out 2 – $1.7b (“Break Even” Aprox $600m) $1.1b Profit (Aprox)
  2. Deadpool & Wolverine – $1.3b (“Break Even” Aprox $600m) $700m Profit (Aprox)
  3. Despicable Me 4 – $969m (“Break Even” Aprox $400m) $569m Profit (Aprox)
  4. Moana 2 – $804b (“Break Even” Aprox $600m) $204m Profit (Aprox)
  5. Dune: Part Two – $708m (“Break Even” Aprox $600m) $108m Profit (Aprox)
  6. Wicked – $593m (“Break Even” Aprox $900m) $300m loss (Aprox)
  7. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire – $569m (“Break Even” Aprox $450m) $119m Profit (Aprox)
  8. Kung Fu Panda 4 – $548m (“Break Even” Aprox $300m) $248m Profit (Aprox)
  9. Venom: The Last Dance – $470m (“Break Even” Aprox $330m) $140m Profit (Aprox)
  10. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – $450m (“Break Even” Aprox $300m) $150m Profit (Aprox)

Analysis

Only the first two of this list broke a billion, same as last year. Indeed post covid that is the average. Pre covid it was around 5 per year. With high inflation and ticket prices increasing even beyond that, we should be seeing more not less. In 2014, “Interstellar”, an original movie and the 10th highest earning that year made $653m. If you adjust for inflation that would be around $871m. That would place it 4th on this years list. Of the $200m+ production budget club, only the top three of this year could be called a success. The other wins are for those films that controlled their budgets. Kung Fu Panda 4 being most notable. “Wicked”, despite it’s success is still a financial failure (Offset a little by it’s strong US box office).

The top ten this year is fairly predictable. These are all fairly safe bets outside of perhaps the Dune sequel and of course, all franchise movies. Dune II was only in the air because the first movie came out during covid and as a result didn’t give us a clear indicator of popularity. However, the cinema is largely starved of proper science fiction blockbusters these days and clearly there is still a market. We will almost certainly see more entries from nine of these in the years to come. Venom. however. is done now along with Sony’s Spider-Man-less Spider-Man films. Outside of the Venom movies that universe has been a total failure and it’s unlikely Venom 3 will have made up for the losses of “Madam Web” and “Kraven”, both apparently in the running for worst superhero movie of all time.

Final Notes

By contrast to the box office, my top ten of the year only included four franchise movies. One of which, “The Fall Guy” was a reboot of an 80’s franchise and so could hardly be said to be a cynical cash in. Most people forgot that 80’s series existed. That’s not the case with Beverly Hills Cop, that was very much a cash in on Nostalgia, but it was done very well and deserves it’s place on the list. That’s the thing, there’s nothing wrong with legacy sequels or franchises, but they shouldn’t totally dominate the blockbuster side of the movies. One of the reasons the modern era is so reliant on the IP’s is because almost no one watches movies for the actors anymore. The age of the movie star is long gone. But with it, the freedom to take chances with the actual movies.

In the social media age, I’m not sure you can have movie stars. So that means studios need to be willing to take more risks with the films themselves so they can create the franchises of the future. It’s not all bad news though. There are good films out there, they just may require a little bit of digging around to find. How many of my top ten did you even hear about this year? What you may not realize is there are a lot more movies being made today than in the 1980’s and we live in the age of instant access. We have more freedom to find the content we like, but with freedom comes responsibility. It’s on us to find that content, we can’t wait for it to come to us. For cinephiles that’s not a problem, but for the general audience? That may be why the box office is still struggling.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!