It’s Super Bowl season, which means it’s also time for movie studios to start rolling out trailers for some of the biggest, most anticipated movies of the summer. This week alone has seen the release of the first trailers for Jurassic World: Rebirth, Fantastic Four: The First Steps, and – hold your breath – a new Smurfs movie, joining the Superman trailer that was unveiled a few weeks ago.
These are likely to be supplemented by additional Super Bowl ads for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning and the live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon, among others.
If this all sounds familiar, well, it should. Unless Disney drops a spot for their upcoming Pixar cartoon Elio, every summer movie receiving the big Super Bowl promo will be a sequel or a high-profile reboot (which is what we’ve been trained to call a remake).
This is because just about every big movie coming out in summer 2025 is, yes, a sequel or a reboot of a well-known franchise. The coming attractions include Thunderbolts*, a Marvel entry that looks like a de facto sequel to Black Widow; more traditional follow-ups to Jurassic World, Mission: Impossible, and The Bad Guys; legacy sequels to The Karate Kid and Freaky Friday; reboots of the entire DC Universe (via Superman), as well as the Smurfs and The Naked Gun; a John Wick spinoff called Ballerina; remakes of Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon; and new horror installments in the 28 Days Later, M3GAN, Final Destination, and I Know What You Did Last Summer series.
It’s to the point where a new Fantastic Four movie is attracting the kind of attention typically reserved for something genuinely new and exciting – or at least something not previously adapted to the screen. In reality, this will be (yes) the fourth Fantastic Four movie in 20 years; in other words, there have been as many Fantastic Four movies during that period as Jurassic World installments or movies featuring Superman.
Even the reboots are reruns, and they often seem unsure as to whether they’re targeting nostalgia, or simply short cultural memories. Remember the pop singer Katy Perry as Smurfette, the designated girl Smurf? Maybe? Well, anyway, get ready for the pop singer Rihanna as Smurfette, the designated girl Smurf, in a movie where cartoon Smurfs visit the live-action “real” world! Just like they did in the 2011 Smurfs movie and its sequel!
