Two big franchises are making their return to the big screen this year, the MCU and the Jurassic World franchise.

The former has a pretty stacked slate after only releasing Deadpool & Wolverine last year. Captain America: Brave New World lands later this month, with Thunderbolts* following in May, and Fantastic Four: First Steps in July. While Jurassic World: Rebirth is arriving in July as well, the first entry in the prehistoric franchise since Jurassic World: Dominion in 2022.

Both of these are billion dollar franchises, and they have the potential to add more hits to their record in 2025. There’s going to be a big struggle coming in July, when Rebirth, Fantastic Four, and the rebooted Superman all hit theatres within a few weeks of each other.

But which will be the most successful? Strangely enough, it might actually be Rebirth and Thunderbolts that end up taking the trophy.

Watching the trailers that released recently for them both, I was struck by how they had something in common: I could immediately tell what these movies were going to be like. True, they might not have been mind-blowing, but compared to the F4 and Superman, I feel pretty confident I know what to expect.

JWR looks like a standard issue dinosaur movie, very similar to Jurassic Park III, even going so far as to copy scenes from that movie, and probably taking some inspiration from the Monsterverse too. It’s obviously not going to be anywhere near the quality of the original, but it still looks like it could be an entertaining action monster movie.

In a similar way, Thunderbolts is very much “seen it all before” with Guardians of the Galaxy and Suicide Squad vibes. But it’s easy to tell what it will be like, a fun, slightly goofy attempt to make a team out of these misfit anti-heroes. It probably won’t be brilliant, but it might give some escapism for a couple of hours.

For audiences who just want to have some fun at the cinema, and are more conscientious about what they spend their money on, they can go to see these movies and have a good idea beforehand whether they’ll enjoy them or not. Last year, Godzilla x Kong released, and it was clear that this wasn’t going to be anything other than VFX and big monsters hitting each other, but still people loved it enough to throw over half-a-billion dollars its way.

One of the features of movies like Thunderbolts is that they carry absolutely no baggage, so people have no expectations for them. On the other hand, Superman and Captain America are popular characters, with beloved films behind them, and in Cap’s case, a solid trilogy of movies among the best in the MCU. They have reputations to uphold, and previous entries to be compared to. Thunderbolts doesn’t have that. The comics aren’t well-known, and most of the team are just background characters in some underwhelming Marvel projects.

While I personally think Jurassic Park is one of the best films ever made, the “World” movies have shifted it towards style-over-substance, and the box office of that trilogy shows that people were still happy to keep watching. So here too there’s not much to beat. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine how Rebirth could be any worse than the last two JW movies.

Does this mean they’ll both hit a billion? I don’t know. In the case of Thunderbolts, there’s nothing yet announced for the May2 weekend that will compete with it, so it could have a clear path ahead. As for JWR, it will depend, I think, on how well Superman and Fantastic Four do when they release in the following weeks. If they get anything less than great reviews, it could prompt people to stick with what they know and go for more prehistoric monsters, even if the reception to that movie is only middling.

We’ll have to wait and see what the reaction is as more promotional material is released, and whether we get any big hits coming this March, but maybe, just maybe, these two underwhelming movies will surprise everyone.

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