The 2025 summer movie season has officially come to an end, and its box office numbers have been, as we all likely know by now, notoriously low. The summer movie season lasts from early May to Labor Day, and it's usually when major studios make the bulk of their revenue for the year. According to the Hollywood Reporter, in 2023, the summer movie season made a healthy $4.09 billion. The following year saw a dip, however, grossing only $3.67 billion. 2025, despite all the major tentpoles, remakes, and ordinarily reliable genre productions, will only barely match 2024.

Notably, superhero movies are no longer as huge as they once were. Three major superhero blockbusters came out this summer -- "Thunderbolts*," "Superman," and "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" -- and while they all made money, none of them cracked $700 million. This is the first time this has happened since 2011. Globally, the world's biggest earners were mostly kid-friendly films. "Ne Zha 2," the highest-grossing animated movie of all time, is burning up the box office in China, while the remakes of "Lilo & Stitch" and "How To Train Your Dragon" have made piles. "A Minecraft Movie" made almost a billion worldwide, and, perhaps predictably, "Jurassic World: Rebirth" pushed the franchise forward.

What this summer season lacks in revenue, however, it has made up for in critical acclaim. Enterprising freelance box office analysts on Reddit have compiled all the year's summer releases that have earned over $10 million domestically. That's 30 titles. The analyst measured their revenue, but also their Rotten Tomatoes approval ratings. It seems that about two-thirds of the releases polled achieved the rare "Fresh" RT rating, that is, 60% or more critics gave it a positive review. That's a great track record. Only five were deemed to be rotten.