When considering that the 2025 box office was topped exclusively by sequels, remakes, adaptations, and F1 (a film based on a brand), it's hard to not place some of the blame on the audience. The merging of studios and unwillingness for tiny distributors to cater to audiences outside of coastal cities are major issues in making great cinema accessible, but it's more often than not that ticket buyers have made familiarity a priority. This may not be an issue when there’s an imaginative Avatar sequel or an uplifting Superman reboot at the top of the weekly charts, but the vast majority of 2025’s retreads indicate the collapse of a diverse selection of options. Should the box office results of 2025 be an indicator of what’s to come, it's likely that anything not connected to a broader franchise or shared universe will only be available on streaming services.
In fairness, some of the worst films of 2025 landed with such little impact that there’s barely reason to be infuriated by them. Wolf Man was an underdeveloped attempt to reboot one of Universal’s historic monster properties that fell short of the ingenuity of The Invisible Man, and pointless sequels like Karate Kid: Legends and The Old Guard 2 failed to drum up enthusiasm. The only lasting harm is when a remake devoid of creativity like Lilo & Stitch is able to make $1 billion globally, or when a vapid, convoluted musical sequel like Wicked: For Good is treated as a serious awards contender. Otherwise, an anomaly like Mel Gibson’s Flight Risk is too inadvertently hilarious to warrant introspection about the decline of the mid-budget thriller. The films that deserve to be chastised aren’t just repulsive on an aesthetic level, but representative of Hollywood’s inability to cook up a passable, three-star night out at the movies.
10. Another Simple Favor: Something happened to Paul Feig. The man behind Freaks & Geeks, one of the greatest “one season wonders” in television, was also responsible for two of the century's funniest films in Bridesmaids and Spy. However, the last decade of Feig’s filmography have consisted of misguided attempts to stray away from straight comedy, with disastrous results; if Ghostbusters, Last Christmas, Jackpot, The School For Good and Evil, and this year’s The Housemaid point to anything, it’s that Feig’s lost an ability to depict characterize that make any sort of rational decisions. Another Simple Favor is particularly disappointing because it's a sequel that forgot the self-aware, satirical edge that made its predecessor a surprising delight.
9. HIM: HIM is an unfortunate case of a great premise squandered by exploitative shock value and a confused message. The story of how a promising football star (Tyriq Withers) is subjected to a brutal training regime by a legendary quarterback (Marlon Wayans) had the potential to be a searing commentary on the dehumanization of athletes by the NFL, but an incongruous blend of literal and metaphorical implications make HIM an unpleasant experience of misdirected fury.
8. The Alto Knights: When Quentin Tarantino proposed that he’d retire in order to not embarrass himself with late-period films, he predicted what Barry Levinson would make with The Alto Knights. The decision to cast Robert De Niro as two unrelated gangsters is the most interesting aspect of a languorous retread of mob movie cliches.
7. Honey, Don’t!: After the Coen brothers parted ways to make individual projects, it became evident where the talent was. Joel Coen turned in a respectable Shakespearean adaptation with The Tragedy of Macbeth, whereas his brother Ethan has now made two trash road trip crime capers filled with egregious accents and incomprehensible plot twists.
6. I Know What You Did Last Summer: The legacy sequel to the 1997 slasher film of the same name is a case of history repeating itself. The original I Know What You Did Last Summer was a ripoff of Scream that lacked the clever commentary on the horror genre in Wes Craven’s masterpiece. Nearly three decades later, the I Know What You Did Last Summer reboot is an attempt to cash in on the popularity of the recent Scream films, but doesn’t have the talented new cast or nostalgic hook to replicate their success.
5. Happy Gilmore 2: Adam Sandler has shamelessly earned paychecks from Netflix thanks to an exclusive deal with the streamer that’s allowed him to get riffs made with his friends classified as “movies.” Happy Gilmore 2 is the most insulting because it took the world of one of his funnier 1990s comedies and cluttered it with product placement, lazy celebrity cameos, and a disregard for anything that resembled real golf.
4. Fountain of Youth: Guy Ritchie has recently operated at an alarming rate, with seven films and three television shows released since 2020. Fountain of Youth is the result of an overworked auteur who no longer has the ability to elevate a mediocre script with his snappy dialogue or visual flare. Released directly on Apple TV, Fountain of Youth is a poor excuse for an Indiana Jones knock-off with a charisma-free performance by John Krasinski and a baffling appearance by Natalie Portman, whose talents are wasted.
3. In Your Dreams: Netflix has again proven that its core audience is those that passively watch the screen; in the case of a kid’s film like In Your Dreams, there’s no desire to incorporate the type of thoughtful psychology or eye-popping animation that appeared in the year’s better animated films, Zootopia 2 and Arco.
2. Jurassic World Rebirth: There hasn’t been a good Jurassic Park film since 1997’s The Lost World, and there hasn’t been a great one since the 1993 original. Jurassic World Rebirth is the most cynical sequel because it's based on the concept that people no longer care for dinosaurs, and they can only be used to profit pharmaceutical companies. A talented cast that included Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali can’t save a script that has no respect for its audience.
1. The Electric State: After they completed their work on four of the most successful (and arguably best) films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Anthony and Joe Russo have come to represent the creative bankruptcy. Their bland adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name, which reportedly cost over $300 million, is lacking in anything beyond the barest recitation of an alternate history in which both humans and machines exist in a vegetative state, lacking any emotion. The film’s explicit sympathy for its garish robot characters is either an amateurish metaphor for race relations or a dubious endorsement of artificial intelligence; it's likely that the Russos aren’t entirely sure. Had The Electric State not faded into obscurity the moment it debuted on Netflix, it could feasibly be ranked alongside Battlefield Earth or Batman & Robin as an all-time disaster.