During the summer of 2023, there was a famed rivalry between Oppenheimer and Barbie, which were released on the same day. In 2025, a similar situation occurred, as superhero fans around the world experienced a new movie rivalry: Superman vs. Fantastic Four. Superman and the Fantastic Four were the stars of the theater this summer, making over 1 billion dollars each in the worldwide box office!
This was certainly a summer to remember due to the amount of times I found myself on my way back to the movie theater, because of the release of yet another highly anticipated movie.
Director James Gunn’s Superman was arguably the most anticipated movie of the year, as Gunn attempted to revive the DCEU with a brand new take on the DCU. He believed that the way to kick off his new cinematic universe was with one of the most popular superheroes of all time, Superman. There was a lot of controversy when David Corenswet took on the challenge of becoming Superman (2025), as he was replacing fan-favorite actor Henry Cavill, but he did indeed deliver. There was almost non-stop action throughout the movie, as Lex Luthor attempted to frame and eliminate Superman simply for the own pleasure of rendering Superman useless to the people of the world. During battles, Superman went out of his way to save the people of Metropolis, as he believed he was meant to do “good” for the people of Earth. Senior Sean Delaney reflects, “What I like most about Superman, compared to other movies, is that Superman spends more time saving people than fighting. There are fight scenes with incredible action and CGI. However, during these fight scenes, Superman will be more focused on making sure every living thing is unharmed. I find this refreshing from other superhero movies that just show flashy fights with the heroes not seeming to care about the damage they cause to win the fights. It recreates the idea that a superhero’s purpose is to help people who can’t help themselves and to be a friend to those who need one.” When Superman discovers he wasn’t who he thought he was as the full message his parents sent him was revealed, it took the help of the most important people around him to realize that his perception of himself is more important than how he is perceived by others. Throughout the movie we saw Superman’s struggle remain true to who he was, which has inspired people to be their most true and best selves worldwide.
Fantastic Four: First Steps, the newest Marvel Cinematic Movie (MCU), directed by Matt Shakman, was the kickstart movie for recently bought characters released on July 25th. The movie includes characters the MCU received after Disney bought 21st Century Fox in 2019. With fan-favorite character icons like Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, The Human Torch, and The Thing, this movie was one of the most anticipated Marvel films since Avengers: Endgame in 2019. These four characters became a family, and with their unique powers, they were the superhero celebrities of their world. However, when a comic world-eating entity named Galactus started going after their newly born child, Franklin, they had to make the toughest decision of them all: choose their family or their world. After deciding to fight for both, the Fantastic Four found a way to make the entire world their family. Everyone worked together to save the world and imprison Galactus in a location where he would take thousands of years to return. During the Marvel post-credit theme, Doctor Doom appeared talking to Franklin after the Invisible Woman stepped aside for a second, creating a cliffhanger for next years’ Avengers: Doomsday. Senior Madison Horn comments, “The post credit scene left a lot of people very excited for the upcoming Marvel film Avengers: Doomsday along with their other upcoming projects.”
Stepping away from superhero movies, F1 was another popular release of this summer. Formula 1 (F1) has been an extremely popular single racing event since the late 2010s, hosting many Grand Prix races globally. F1: The Movie was released on June 27th, 2025, and it immediately took movie theaters around the world by storm, grossing a total of 624.3 million dollars worldwide. Junior Liz Conforti comments, “What made the movie enjoyable was how accurate it was to the real Formula 1 races.” Movie star Brad Pitt played the fictional F1 racing legend, Sonny Hayes, as he attempts to find redemption and lead a struggling F1 team to victory, all while attempting to become a mentor for rookie racer Joshua Pearce. Conforti continues, “Brad Pitt’s performance made the movie better because of his previous extensive acting skills.”
Moreover, Jurassic World Rebirth is the newest addition of the Jurassic World franchise, which has made 6 total movies since the original Jurassic Park in 1993. Senior Jonathan Sendrowski states, “I think it lived up to my expectations, which isn’t the greatest thing since they were already kind of low. I think it’s better than the last two Jurassic World movies, but that isn’t a hard bar to cross. It came across as too safe, they didn’t take many risks with any new ideas. It felt like a hybrid of all of the other movies with nothing new added in between.” This “rebirth” was a story surrounding the extinction of dinosaurs, and soon to be humans too, as scientist Zora Bennett attempts to travel to an experimental dinosaur island and retrieve 3 dinosaur’s life-saving DNA. Along the way, they find unique dangerous dinosaurs that make their journey rather difficult and life-threatening.
Although Adam Sandler’s Happy Gilmore 2 came out exclusively on Netflix on July 25th, there was still a massive audience enjoying the cameo-heavy sequel of the original Happy Gilmore released in 1996. Singer Bad Bunny had the biggest role of the cameos, as he was the caddy for Happy throughout the movie. Other cameos included Scottie Scheffler leading the many professional golfers, NFL player Travis Kelce, WNBA player Kelsey Plum, former NBA player Boban Marjanović, sports writer Stephen A. Smith, singers Eminem, Post Malone, and Kid Cudi, and of course, Adam Sandler’s family. Junior Griffin Lorenz comments, “The constant cameos were overwhelming and it felt like pushing the narrative forward was no longer the priority of the filmmakers, but instead it was just to make money…I wouldn’t necessarily say it was harder to understand, but most of them felt forced and weren’t adding to the plot whatsoever, and more so just there for shock value or to attract viewers.” Happy Gilmore 2 was a redemption act for former golfer Happy Gilmore, as he attempted to get out of his bad habits and back into the game of golf. The antagonist, “Maxi-Golf” was a new kind of golf that was taking over the world which tried to make golfing more enjoyable. In order for golf to stay the same, Happy had to lead his golfing team to victory, while returning to his old ways. Lorenz continues, “I found the new “Maxi-Golf” to be an uninteresting and frustrating addition to the movie. It was a boring antagonistic force, and it felt like low-hanging fruit for Adam Sandler to take a cheap stab at Gen-z and modern technology. In the first movie he came up with a simple yet effective antagonist and in the sequel it just fell short.”
Some other popular movies that were released this summer include The Naked Gun, Smurfs (2025), Bad Guys 2, KPop Demon Hunters on Netflix, and Freakier Friday.