July film preview: Superheroes, Sandler, and Smurfs infiltrate summer movie season
Summer 2025 is marked with reboots of no less than three franchises, a big legacy sequel swing from Adam Sandler, and another trip to Jurassic Park.
Photo: (clockwise from top left) Warner Bros., Marvel, Universal, Netflix
There’s no cure for the summertime blues better than the movies. The air conditioning. The ice-cold drinks. The legally required trip to Jurassic Park. Summer is here, and Hollywood is hoping the third time is the charm for Superman, The Fantastic Four, and The Smurfs, all of which are going for their third refresh attempt. We at The A.V. Club are ready for it all, and have already covered many of the biggest July film releases in our expansive summer preview. But if you’re the type to venture off the beaten path, we have even more movies to share while you get ready for another trip to Metropolis and the Baxter Building. Papa Smurf is missing and the only place you’ll find him is at a theater near you!
Jurassic World Rebirth (July 2)
Returning to another Monster Island, Universal and filmmaker Gareth Edwards welcome audiences to Jurassic World Rebirth. One has to hand it to the studio for extracting even more dinosaur DNA from this 32-year-old franchise, and only three years after the last billion-dollar blockbuster entry. Life finds a way. This time, a team of scientists, thrill-seeking explorers, and one child (naturally) head to Jurassic Park’s R&D department in search of the missing ingredient to a unicorn pharmaceutical. Unfortunately, they only find genetically mutated and enhanced dinosaurs. Whoops! Directed by Godzilla‘s Evans, the movie stars Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey, and Mahershala Ali.
40 Acres (July 2)
40 Acres takes a more grounded and satirical view of the doomsday prepper subgenre popularized by A Quiet Place. Set sometime after the apocalypse, 40 Acres pits Danielle Deadwyler and her family of survivalists against the murderous hordes that also survived the end of the world. Thankfully, she’s been getting her bunker ready for this, and channels hundreds of years of generational trauma into a tense siege thriller.
Heads Of State (July 2)
John Cena as the president? Now we’ve seen everything. Cena plays an action hero-turned-politician who becomes the target of an assassination plot while on a diplomatic mission with the Prime Minister of the U.K. (Idris Elba). Directed by Nobody and Hardcore Henry director Ilya Naishuller, Heads Of State leans into its ridiculous premise and CGI-heavy action. Presumably, any movie featuring President Cena would need to be pretty silly, even considering that the U.S. actually will likely elect the 17-time WWE Champion one day.
Superman (July 11)
He may be faster than a speeding bullet, but can Superman outrun superhero fatigue? Warner Bros. sure hopes so. After the studio’s profitable but divisive Snyderverse, James Gunn hopes to restore some goodwill and consistency to the DC Cinematic Universe—maybe even some hope. Appropriately, he’s introducing the new DCU via the very first superhero: Superman (David Corenswet) will fly around a Metropolis populated by dogged reporter Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan), evil mastermind Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult), and a gaggle of masked vigilantes already doing the cape thing. How this Superman and The Batman: Part II will co-exist as separate cinematic universes is beyond us, but maybe (some of) these movies can be fun again?