If you are plagued by a fear of the unknown and also consider yourself a bit of a film buff, then you are living in exciting times indeed. Why? Because rather than torture you with unchartered territory via a new organic, original film, Hollywood has appeared to have sworn an affidavit to stick to what is tried and twisted and slap a 2 (or 3, or 4, or 8) at the end of it just for you. Welcome – once more – to the age of sequels, the 2025 edition.
If you recall last week's 2024 roundup, we are smack in the middle of a sequels pandemic, the celluloid equivalent of cultural stagnation. If you still have a yearning for yet more Bridget Jones shenanigans without Mark Darcy but with a back-from-the-dead Daniel Cleaver, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy will have your back in February. Perhaps you nurse a desire for problematic missions and the sight of Tom Cruise sprinting for his life and engaging in all sorts of athletics, in which case Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning will be right up your alley in May.
If you cannot get enough of Adam Sandler's silliness, Happy Gilmore 2 lies in wait for you this summer. Or maybe you are haunted by the nagging feeling that Zootopia had unfinished business, but fear not, because Zootopia 2 will fix everything in November. And of course, if you think the world would benefit from yet more tales from sponge-oriented under-the-sea adventures, The SpongeBob Movie: Search for Squareparents will be there to tide you over in December. Whatever your sequel heart can conjure up, 2025 promises to be the year for you.
An original, with a twist
Filmmakers recognise that if something cannot have a digit added to its name, then perhaps it can be stretched (or compressed) to a different format. Last year we saw a TV series version Mr and Mrs Smith, expanded from the film of the same name from 2005 starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie (and inevitably casting Jennifer, the original Mrs Pitt, aside to spawn Brangelina.) Later this year, Peaky Blinders fans will get to enjoy Tommy Shelby's gang escapades in film format after a successful TV show that lasted from 2013 to 2022. With the return of the creator Steven Knight and the incomparable Cillian Murphy, we are allowed to nurse hopes that the Peaky Blinders film is not fated to disappoint.
When something cannot be expanded/collapsed accordion-style into a different format, it is repacked into a reboot. This, of course, is why we are about to be saddled with a needless Snow White that promises to be even less appealing than its trailer. Having said that, we need not tar the Naked Gun reboot with the same brush, coming out in August and starring Liam Neeson, a man who in general can do very little wrong. The dictionary definition of spoof, the original Naked Gun series from the nineties starring Leslie Nielson and pre-trial OJ Simpson, transported comedy to new heights. These gems are sufficiently far back in the rear-view mirror now that bringing a repackaged version to a Gen-Z audience (who are otherwise repelled by dated nineties footage) can only be a good thing. Provided, of course those same Gen-Z viewers are not expecting Neeson to exhibit the silky finesse he exuded in the Taken franchise.
A tired formula
Despite the scourge of modern-day Disney live-action rebranded projects, reboots are not a strictly new phenomenon, and nor do they all have to cause you to fill a bucket with vomit. Steve Martin fans, for example, may be aware that his Pink Panther films of the early 2000s, Father of the Bride (1991), and The Out of Towners (1999) are all reboots of originals either the seventies or the fifties. No one who has ever seen the upgraded version, however, will find anything lacking, not even if they are sitting with the screenplay, a red pen, and an unforgiving eye.
Sadly, the same cannot be said of sequels. Disney fans of a certain age may still be haunted by the monstrosity that was Lion King II: Simba's Pride (1998). A direct-to-TV sequel born after the mind-blowing success of the original (a twist on Hamlet and Bambi), this pointless sequel detailed Simba's struggle with his daughter, who opted to fall in love with Scar's son. In this Serengeti lion version of Romeo and Juliet, we learn that Scar headed a whole pride clan he declined to tell his family of origin about in the first film. This would be bad enough on its own, but the pain of this retconned stupidity was amplified via drawings that were whatever the diametric opposite of breathtaking is, and a soundtrack that was so shockingly mediocre that it would have been better for it to have been forgettable altogether.
Just when you thought nothing could beat the mediocrity of Lion King II, along came the direct-to-TV The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea in 2000 to prove that yes, the abyss of mediocrity can sink so far below that you may as well dig down to the core of the earth and come out the other side. Turning the story of red-haired wanting-to-grow-legs-and-live-on-land Ariel on its head, we have Ariel and Eric's daughter Melody (a female version of her father in looks) yearning to ditch her legs, grow fins and live in the ocean. Since Ursula, villainess extraordinaire of the original, had been pierced through the stomach with a very pointy ship part by seafaring hero Eric and subsequently perished, we learn that, just like Scar never bothered telling anyone about his secret family, Ursula had a secret sister she never informed anyone about, who lures Melody away for her own evil purposes. Unimaginatively drawn with music that was a far cry from Alan Menken's original score, consider yourself fortunate if this superfluous sequel skipped your notice back in the day. Do not go hunting for it now, unless you are the type of individual who halts traffic by rubbernecking at roadside car crashes.
There is hope
Whilst 2025 may be peppered with sequels, at least we have now come to the point where they are not ugly and come with a robust soundtrack. Frozen 2 (2019), whilst replete with a logic-free plot, contained at least two powerhouse songs (Into The Unknown and Show Yourself) that held their own when juxtaposed with the cultish movement spawned by Let It Go. Besides, as the sleep-inducing original story, Encanto (2021) proved with Lin-Manuel Miranda's tongue-twisting unsingable soundtrack, perhaps original content is not the way to go after all. A sequel that stays true to the original is not necessarily a bad thing. As long as Hollywood learns from the sobering train wreck that was Lion King II and continues to churn out familiar content that sidesteps mediocrity, 2025 looks to be a promising year.
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