After the first trailer for James Gunn’s Superman premiered in late 2024, the filmmaker offered some insight into the movie’s beaten, bloodied take on the Last Son of Krypton. “We do have a battered Superman in the beginning. That is our country,” Gunn told journalists at a special Q&A preview event. Few would disagree with his analogy for the current state of America. One could also argue, though, that the Man of Steel’s broken state in the Superman trailer is also reflective of the superhero genre’s status heading into 2025.
Warner Bros. Pictures pointedly didn’t release any new DC films in 2024, having brought its troubled DC Extended Universe to an end in 2023 with The Flash and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. Marvel, meanwhile, tried to recover from multiple difficult, consecutive years of critical and financial disappointments by lowering its output in 2024. The studio released just one film, Deadpool & Wolverine, and only two new shows, Echo and Agatha All Along. Deadpool & Wolverine was a massive box office success, and Agatha All Along ranks as one of Marvel’s most warmly reviewed projects in years. No one would go so far as to say that either title truly revived the Marvel Cinematic Universe or turned its luck around, though.
While Gunn’s Creature Commandos got the new DC Universe off to a quietly auspicious start at the end of 2024 as well, the franchise’s biggest tests still lie in its near and distant future. Both Marvel and DC are, in other words, entering 2025 not all that unlike David Corenswet’s Clark Kent in the first Superman trailer: battered, but not completely dead. Looking ahead, there’s no doubt that both studios have given themselves an equal chance to come roaring back to life, too. Whether they’ll actually do so over the next 12 months, however, is another matter entirely.
The birth of the DC Universe
DC Studios is only releasing one movie this year, and it’s Superman. The film’s first trailer raked in record-setting viewership numbers, but it also divided fans between those who were turned off by its colorful, surreal look and those who were delighted by that very same aesthetic. Regardless of how you feel, it’s hard to overstate the importance of Superman, which could end up being the year’s biggest superhero movie — and potentially by a wide margin. The film will be the first taste of the live-action DCU, and viewers will either accept what it has to offer or reject it.
The fact that it is going to introduce not only the DCU’s Superman but also multiple other noteworthy comic book characters just makes it all the more important for it to stick its landing. At this point, it seems likely that it will, given Gunn’s track record with comic book adaptations and the seemingly spot-on casting choices of Corenswet as Clark Kent and (especially) Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane. But we’ll see either way in July whether Gunn really was a good fit for Superman. For now, the passionate reception to its first trailer suggests that moviegoers are, at the very least, hungry for a new, truly mainstream superhero movie (the last one arguably being 2022’s The Batman).
Warner Bros. is also set to premiere Peacemaker season 2 in August, but given that the series is a holdover from Gunn’s DCEU days, it’s hard to say with any real conviction that its new episodes will have much of an impact on the future of the wider DCU. Like Creature Commandos, Peacemaker season 2 will see Gunn returning to a very familiar toolbox, which means it is less likely to either fail or blow viewers more away than Superman.
The Marvel of it all
2025 is going to be a much more packed year for Marvel Studios than DC. The former is set to release three movies (Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts*, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps) and three live-action TV shows (Daredevil: Born Again, Ironheart, and Wonder Man) this year, as well as three new animated series (Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Eyes of Wakanda, and Marvel Zombies). Putting aside the year’s animated Disney+ titles, which have never had much of an impact on the overall state of the MCU, Marvel’s 2025 live-action slate is already looking like a bit of a mixed bag.
Daredevil: Born Again and Ironheart both have a lot of potential, but their many behind-the-scenes delays are cause for concern. Ironheart‘s Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) was also, through no real fault of her own, the weakest part of 2022’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which means the character hasn’t really proven yet that she’s both worthy and capable of leading her own TV show. Wonder Man seems like it could be a lot of fun, but it has, notably, already been given the Marvel Spotlight banner. That means its actual connections to other MCU projects will be minimal at best and its ability to, therefore, reflect on the state of the MCU-at-large will be similarly limited.
Marvel’s 2025 TV year seems, in other words, like it could very much go either way right now. The same is, unfortunately, true of its big-screen slate. There may be a lot of goodwill surrounding Captain America: Brave New World, but the film’s trailers haven’t been anything to write home about and have looked downright ugly at points. The movie has also reportedly been reshot and rewritten so many times now that its production is starting to seem more troubled than Apocalypse Now‘s. Things simply aren’t looking good for the film, and it already feels like Marvel is releasing it in February solely so that it can get right to its two other, more promising 2025 theatrical efforts.
Outside of its initial, partly strike-related delays, there have been few reasons to suspect that Thunderbolts* is going to be an uneven misfire on the same level as many of the studio’s more recent films. It features, even by Marvel standards, a star-studded cast, and a script co-written by frequent MCU writer Eric Pearson (Black Widow), Beef creator Lee Sung Jin, and The Bear co-showrunner Joanna Calo. Lee and Calo are two accomplished writers with a proven track record of handling complex, often contentious relationships onscreen. That makes them two writers uniquely well-suited for Thunderbolts*, a film that Marvel is seemingly so confident in that it has already released longer trailers for it than any of its other recent and upcoming movies.
Thunderbolts* will bring a new team to the MCU, as will The Fantastic Four: First Steps, which boasts an exciting lead cast and a ’60s retro-futuristic aesthetic that already promises to separate it from all other live-action Marvel fare. No one has been able to get the Fantastic Four right onscreen before, though, and First Steps director Matt Shakman struggled to pull off WandaVision‘s climactic, VFX-heavy set pieces back in 2021. He handled his Game of Thrones directing duties better in that department, but one can only hope he’ll be able to strike a better balance in First Steps than he did in WandaVision. If he does and if the film’s screenplay is up to par, then it could be exactly the kind of marquee bolt of lightning that Marvel and the MCU need right now. But those are two big “ifs.”
In the years where Marvel has released as many new movies and TV shows as it will in 2025, the studio has struggled to maintain the astonishing quality control that once separated and elevated its offerings. That means the question may not even be whether every new project Marvel releases this year will be good. The question may instead be whether the studio will get enough right in 2025 to make fans believe that it has really and truly put the MCU back on track. Fingers crossed it manages to do that, otherwise Marvel will lose what little momentum Deadpool & Wolverine and Agatha All Along have given it heading into 2025, a year that seems destined to determine fans’ opinions about both the MCU and the DCU for the foreseeable future.
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