It’s time to take a look back at 2025 in film and ponder what we’ve learned…
2025 is drawing to a close, and we can get a sense of how things have gone and what we’ve learned from cinema this year. It’s fair to say there have been surprises and some trends continuing, with others buckin )(sadly for Jared Leto, his box office appeal continues to be about as enticing as a T-bone to a militant vegan).
We’re moving ahead to a 2026 filled with highly anticipated movies, some of which could well be doomed to fail financially, or potentially shock the world by turning the fortunes of long-dusty genres with waning box office appeal (okay, I’m talking about Nolan’s The Odyssey). YouTubers and cineast message boards continually tell us that cinema is dead and Hollywood no longer makes good films. Is that true? Well, for the answer to that and more, let’s look at the things we learned from film in 2025…
Josh is King
Josh O’Connor is on a hell of a hot streak right now. Having gained fame and acclaim in The Crown, his movie career has quietly simmered beneath the surface of mainstream cinema. However, to those who have seen him in Challengers, La Chimera, Rebuilding and The Mastermind, or ventured back to catch up on God’s Own Country, one thing is clear – this is a compelling performer and the type that audiences deep down are craving for.
We’re too frequently given vacant and uninteresting leads in ‘content’ cinema, perhaps sometimes playing a well-known IP character and given no license to imbue said character with any personality. Granted, that’s a systematic problem with mega budget, content-focused filmmaking and not always the fault of the performer, but there’s rarely anything interesting or enigmatic about many of these. O’Connor, conversely, is magnetic, always interesting and just brings soulfulness to every role.
He’s now trodden the set in a big event movie too, co-leading Wake Up Dead Man, the latest Knives Out. A rollicking good yarn I was able to catch in cinemas that deserved a wider release. Even in a big ensemble mainstream release, O’Connor is magnetic. He is given license to be with Rian Johnson’s excellent screenplay, direction and a great supporting cast. Could he be the next Bond? He’s continuing to make interesting choices and not falling into big money but soulless cinema.
Celluloid isn’t Dead.
For most people, the film vs digital debate probably doesn’t mean much. Shooting on film is costly, often problematic and something of an indulgence, but the end results look great. People wonder why films don’t look as visually appealing or interesting as they did last century. They wonder why a lot of streaming originals, or content-focused production line movies, look so uniform, and why suddenly ugly-looking films are ‘in.’
It’s not entirely to do with shooting digitally as opposed to film, but other elements are inherently tied to shooting on digital vs film, from the approach to lighting, to the work done in post on colour grading. A film’s look on a streamer of the week special might well create a good 90% of the visual palette in post by shooting it as flat as possible in log. This is especially true of films with large amounts of green screen. It results in many films going for a very crisp uniform look, with some increasingly being made to match YouTube vlog content aesthetically. Or being very bold with contrast and colour in grade (but leaving it feeling too artificial), or trying to be too subtle (and everything still looks like it’s in log).
Still, whether it’s Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, or the respective new Safdie Brothers’ films, Luca Guadagnino or Yorgos Lanthimos, plenty of auteurs are still flying the flag for film, where much of the film’s look is captured on set and ‘refined’ in post. The dreamy nuances of celluloid, in turn, just add that special sauce that’s difficult for anyone but master cinematographers (like Deakins) to recreate on digital.
Auteur’s are Still Thriving
With so many studios commercially minded and revenues tanking for so many in the streaming landscape, it’s a wonder that most auteur films get a green light. The aforementioned Coogler had credit in the bank to go off and make Sinners, but Chloe Zhao’s big-budget foray with The Eternals bombed, and Oscar-winning films like Nomadland, whilst cost-effective due to a low budget, don’t make huge amounts in box office revenue. She still had enough to dine out on as an Oscar winner to get Hamnet going.
Paul Thomas Anderson has never been a big box office pull, but with Leonardo DiCaprio in tow, he got to play with his biggest budget to date and carte blanche on One Battle After Another. None of these films are likely to fill the coffers. Hollywood has long loved letting an auteur have their wicked creative way. It feels like there’s a new Guadagnino or Lanthimos film every week, though they’re not exactly ‘Hollywood.’
Not only that, but for Anderson and Coogler in particular, their desire to shoot on difficult formats and to exhibit in very particular ways was also indulged. The results of course looked glorious, but whether either will get those same luxuries on their next films remains to be seen (I hope so). Auteur films can be inherently divisive, but always more interesting than something made via an executive focus group blueprint.
Great Cinema is Still Being Made
Look, let’s face it, if you check out the top 10 box office hits of the year, you’ll see a lot of dross. You’ll also see films regarded as flops (which is an issue in itself). The continuing argument, trumpeted widely by YouTubers who dine out on pessimistic content (because it’s the most popular), is that most films these days are awful and nothing good is being made.
Well, let’s look at big-screen spectacle films. This year we’ve had F1, One Battle After Another and Sinners, which all ticked the box of the spectacle chaser, but were also widely acclaimed. However, what many often don’t consider is indie or world cinema. The horror genre has always been inherently ‘indie’ and smaller scale, allowing more creative freedom. A recent boon has continued thanks to films like Bring Her Back and Weapons. They’ve also been prominent in multiplexes and found audiences.
But people still need to look beyond those. Train Dreams was a rare streaming original that was genuinely brilliant and dripping with nuance. Whilst No Other Choice, Sentimental Value, and It Was Just an Accident are among some stellar world cinema offerings. There are also hidden gems like Super Happy Forever, which almost no one without a Mubi account and outside of Japan is likely to see. If you look at a cinema listing with five films and think they all look terrible, then look a bit deeper and look elsewhere.
Superhero Movies Are So Last Week
I’m usually a bemoaner of superhero cinema. Like many, I quite enjoyed that initial early-century wave, up to the early days of the MCU. I really loved Sam Raimi’s first two Spidey’s, and RDJ’s opening gambit as Tony Stark was a genuine and pleasing surprise. We’ve been oversaturated, though. Kev started to churn these things out like the Hershey factory shits out kisses, and it showed.
Everything peaked with the mega event that was Infinity War/Endgame. Then something else happened. The kids these films were aimed at outgrew them, and newer kids weren’t nearly as interested in comic heroes. It feels like a long time since the last undisputed, runaway financial success, and most feel inherently disposable.
Still, this year I found myself actually quite enjoying Thunderbolts and The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Granted, they still disappeared from my memory like a fart in a gale, but what I did recall was a feeling of being entertained in the moment. Actually, to give dues, I loved the neo-retro look in Fantastic Four, and appreciated Thunderbolts for including set pieces that weren’t just a barrage of smashy smashy, CGI nonsense (along with game casts in each).
Superman was divisive, and I erred on the side of being bored, but didn’t hate it. Trouble is, the first Christopher Reeve/Richard Donner film is my Superman; it’s still the most entertaining and still has the guy who got both sides of the coin absolutely bang on. Reeve was also charismatic and had magnetism for days.
However, all that aside, the issue remains, nothing did the kind of gangbusters box office to warrant such enormous outlays. That’s going by the rather simple viewpoint that a film needs to make x amount over its budget to be deemed a success, and that’s what studios want. Clearly, the system of spending $200 million plus on a movie has a deeper purpose, and that’s to line pockets (because many don’t actually look like they cost close to the budgets). By the end, these things rarely make a profit and if they don’t? It probably doesn’t really matter, especially when they become a streamer’s prized headliner for a month or two, weeks after theatrical release. That also means there’s not really a great need to make them good. Thankfully, filmmakers do still try.
The Box Office is Wildly Unpredictable
People probably knew The Minecraft Movie would do well. Did they envision it being one of the biggest movies of the year? Probably not. Was there any fanfare or anticipation for Zootropolis 2 or Lilo and Stitch? Not especially, but they dropped in theaters, they were present and correct for parents to see and think, “my tike will probably enjoy that”, so they’ve made big bucks. Almost without trying.
The Jurassic World franchise, despite continually churning out crap films, still makes massive amounts, although maybe that is predictable, but it also flies in the face of going to the well too often, like other sub-genres have been punished for. Yes, it seems dinos are evergreen.
Brad Pitt and Joseph Kosinski’s F1: The Movie proved to have loads of fuel in the tank. On paper, it looked like a guaranteed bomb, and yet this big-budget star-powered film about Formula 1 definitely surprised people. Pitt’s lasting charisma helped, and Kosinski’s leaning toward capturing practical stunts where possible likewise, because it’s almost alien to new audiences who grew up watching spectacle almost entirely created on greenscreens. Who would have had F1 down to outgross, Superman?
Physical Media Collecting is Cool
Despite year-on-year declining sales, there’s still a feeling that physical media is on the up. It’s now become niche and counter culture almost, but also there’s a growing rise in popularity for physical media-focused content on YouTube, etc. The Criterion Closet has become hugely popular now.
Suddenly, collecting things is cool again, and among people showing off toy collections, vinyl collections or whatever else, there’s a growing interest in collecting physical media. We’re being told with great regularity by collectors that streaming’s gatekeeping is a threat to ownership, that even if you purchase a film to keep digitally, it could still be taken off you at any time. Yet, unless a guy in a balaclava and a black and white striped jumper robs you, no one can take your Blu-ray copy of Oppenheimer.
Additionally, there are also thousands of legitimately great, interesting or cult films that have, or are hitting physical media, that aren’t available on streaming. Furthermore, as many of my age will fondly recall, DVDs and Blu-rays also include extra features, should that be of interest to you. Apart from anything else, a Blu-ray hasn’t been compressed like a streaming version and (as long as you look after it) will also run at a higher, more consistent quality, not affected by a drop in your internet speed. Physical media forever!
Indie Filmmakers are on a Cliff Edge.
Films aren’t making money. Decent distribution and theatrical exhibition are difficult for low-budget films. With so many industry shutdowns in recent years due to COVID or strikes, the US is still trying to recover, leaving crews waiting for the industry to kick into gear again. In the UK, lack of investment has proved to be a major issue, making an industry already in the doldrums worse.
At the bottom of these chains, you have filmmakers, who can’t find the resources to make movies, dealing with official funding bodies that are poorly run and sometimes cynically focused on where to put the money. Private equity investors are thin on the ground because, ultimately, film is a terrible investment. It leaves only those who fancy an ego-trip or the opportunity to have their name on a poster as a producer (or sometimes even as an actor).
Even when indie creatives manage to make a movie, the hopes of residuals coming in from ‘profits’ and a bit of passive income are almost zilch. If you’ve used a sales agent and a distributor, and the latter has licensed your film through another distributor or to platforms, the chain only gets longer for those pennies to filter back.
Ultimately, that’s the biggest issue, too. Short of their own content or star-driven vehicles, the likes of Netflix and Amazon hold all the cards. For mere mortal filmmakers, they might look at Netflix as some kind of aspirational destination. The reality is, even getting there doesn’t mean riches. Prime Video, via subscription included projects, or through those on advertising video on demand, pays fractions of a penny per hour streamed. The math on that system just ain’t mathing.
In simpler terms, back in the halcyon days of VHS and DVD, if your film was purchased or rented, that money, a significant proportion per buy/rental, came back to the filmmaker. As a filmmaker myself, I’ve had films hit tens of millions of views across platforms, which effectively means nothing. Ten million people renting your DVD 25 years ago? You’d have to decide where to park the Lambo.
Of course, finding distribution to an audience has never been easier, thanks to streaming, and tens of thousands of films are made and released a year compared to thousands per territory back before streaming. Flickering Myth put out two films in 2025, The Baby in the Basket and Death Among the Pines, and getting the money to make them was a nightmare. Funding the next thing? Maybe a pipe dream.
Sadly, though, these megalomaniacal entities are constantly moving the goalposts, making an array of aspects more difficult, but none more so than making money as the creator. The impending buyout of Warner Bros. inevitably comes with fallout, and it’ll likely only be bad news for filmmakers.
What are your thoughts on 2025 in film? Let us know on our social channels @FlickeringMyth…
Tom Jolliffe
