The 2025 summer movie season has officially come to an end, and its box office numbers have been, as we all likely know by now, notoriously low. The summer movie season lasts from early May to Labor Day, and it’s usually when major studios make the bulk of their revenue for the year. According to the Hollywood Reporterin 2023, the summer movie season made a healthy $4.09 billion. The following year saw a dip, however, grossing only $3.67 billion. 2025, despite all the major tentpoles, remakes, and ordinarily reliable genre productions, will only barely match 2024.
Notably, superhero movies are no longer as huge as they once were. Three major superhero blockbusters came out this summer — “Thunderbolts*,” “Superman,” and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” — and while they all made money, none of them cracked $700 million. This is the first time this has happened since 2011. Globally, the world’s biggest earners were mostly kid-friendly films. “Ne Zha 2,” the highest-grossing animated movie of all time, is burning up the box office in China, while the remakes of “Lilo & Stitch” and “How To Train Your Dragon” have made piles. “A Minecraft Movie” made almost a billion worldwide, and, perhaps predictably, “Jurassic World: Rebirth” pushed the franchise forward.
What this summer season lacks in revenue, however, it has made up for in critical acclaim. Enterprising freelance box office analysts on Reddit have compiled all the year’s summer releases that have earned over $10 million domestically. That’s 30 titles. The analyst measured their revenue, but also their Rotten Tomatoes approval ratings. It seems that about two-thirds of the releases polled achieved the rare “Fresh” RT rating, that is, 60% or more critics gave it a positive review. That’s a great track record. Only five were deemed to be rotten.
Most of the summer blockbusters got positive reviews
The best-reviewed movies of the summer were not the major blockbusters, but unexpected horror sleepers. The most pleasant surprise was the success of Zach Cregger’s eerie missing-child film “Weapons,” which only cost $38 million to make and made over $232 million worldwide. That film was overwhelmingly well-reviewed by critics, ultimately earning a 94% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. “Final Destination: Bloodlines,” the sixth film in the everyone-always-dies franchise, has an approval rating of 92%, while the horror/romance body-mashing movie “Together” scored a 90%. Challenging horror films like “Bring Her Back,” “28 Years Later,” and “Friendship” also scored in the high 80 percentile.
Superhero movies have been waning in popular estimation for a while, but they are doing well with critics. “Thunderbolts*,” which /Film’s B.J. Colangelo loved, scored an 88% approval rating, while “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” which I loved, comes in at 87%. James Gunn’s new version of “Superman” still achieved a respectable 83% approval. The future of superhero cinematic universes may look grim, but the movies seem to be getting better.
As mentioned, only five of the 30 major summer releases on the Reddit list were deemed rotten by RT critics. Although a huge hit, “Jurassic World: Rebirth” was only liked by 51% of the critics. Sequels and remakes like “Karate Kid: Legends,” “M3GAN 2.0,” and “I Know What You Did Last Summer” also did poorly, scoring 58%, 58%, and 36% respectively. “The Smurfs” was the summer’s biggest critical loser, getting approval from only 21% of critics. It still made over $31 million anyway.
As any critic can tell you, a film’s financial success is wholly unconnected from its quality. Bad films make millions all the time, and great films are regularly ignored. So grim reports on 2025’s box office numbers are not the actual bellwether for the year’s success. Critically, this summer was one of the most successful in recent memory.