A Flash Forward to 2025
2025 is shaping up to be an interesting year, and it seems this will be matched with equally exciting new films. While 2024 is not yet over with many great films still to come, such as Ridley Scott's Gladiator 2 and Luca Guadagnino’s latest film Queer, it's fun to look ahead and flash forward to see what's in store for us over the next 12/13 months.
The 2025 film schedule seems to have a healthy dose of nostalgia with its line-up of movie reboots and new instalments from The Naked Gun, Tron, The Running Man, and Freaky Friday - all of which will hopefully offer new takes or act as good sequels to these classics. The Naked Gun and The Running Man are franchises that have not been touched in nearly 3 decades. While I’m not necessarily a big follower of the Tron franchise, I’ll certainly be seated for said Naked Gun remake just to see if Liam Neeson can match the comedic style. Edgar Wright's Running Man also poses a similar challenge for Glen Powell to match Schwarzenegger's performance from the 1987 original. However, he has demonstrated with his plethora of roles in some of 2024's most popular films that he has the talent to be one of today's leading actors, just as Schwarzenegger was in the 1980s/90s.
This focus on franchises and remakes continues further into 2025, seeing new instalments in the Avatar, SAW, and Jurassic Park series, as well as a whole host of sequels such as M3GAN 2.0, Wicked Part 2, Zootropolis 2, Scream 7 and more Disney live action remakes. It will be interesting to see how this focus on past IP throughout 2025 will result in how audiences turn out for these franchises and whether their individual pull power to the cinema has increased or faded.
2025 is also a massive year for Marvel who throughout 2024 has been largely focusing on TV to limited success, only releasing one MCU film in 2024, the incredibly successful Deadpool and Wolverine. In 2025 the studio will be debuting three or four new releases (Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts, The Fantastic Four and potentially a new Spiderverse film) all of which the Marvel execs are likely hoping can redeem or reignite what many including myself have come to see as a stagnating or fading franchise. Perhaps with the increased competition from James Gunn’s new ‘DC Cinematic Universe’, starting theatrically with Superman, they will finally have to up their game now that there could be a more organised opposition to Marvel's dominance in the superhero space.
When it comes to these Superhero films I am particularly looking forward to Fantastic Four. While I have many nostalgic memories of watching the old Fox movies growing up and reading the comics, I was certainly let down by the infamous reboot Fant4stic. Nevertheless, I’m optimistic that this film will be good - especially with the casting of Ebon Moss-Bachrach as the rock-based monster The “Thing” – a role which I thought he’d be ‘fantastic’ for after watching his performance in The Bear. Moreso than the other Marvel films I am certainly looking forward to James Gunn’s Superman film which from early set photos looks great as a DC fan I am hoping that Mr Gunn can finally guide the DC comics franchise to a level that Marvel used to operate in the cinema space.
Away from superhero films, 2025 has a great lineup for a plethora of genres. 2025 looks like it will have some great kids' films such as the latest Wallace and Gromit film Vengeance Most Fowl (which will feature the return of one of cinema’s best villains, Feather McGraw) as well as the Minecraft movie. For fans of romance, the year is certainly starting strong with Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh in We Live In Time which comes out January 1st and is certain to pull on the heartstrings. For Horror, Robert Eggers' remake of the 1922 Nosferatu is highly anticipated as well as the adaption of Stephen King’s short story The Monkey. Finally, for Sci-fi, I and many others are excited for Mickey 17, a new science fiction black comedy film directed by the brilliant Bong Joon-ho that stars Robert Pattison and is based on one of the best science fiction books of 2022, Edward Ashton’s Mickey7.
Overall flashing forward to 2025 avid filmgoers have a lot to look forward to and no doubt many of these upcoming and exciting films will be shown here across the year at the Warwick Student Cinema.