There have been a lot of superhero stories told over the decades from DC and Marvel, but it’s been a while since things lined up quite like this. Of 2025’s wave of cape movies and shows, several of them—from Thunderbolts* and Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man to the just-released Superman and incoming Fantastic Four: First Steps—are reboots in some form or another. In the comics these characters originated from, reboots happen on a regular basis, and their movie counterparts are no strangers to this endeavor. But the refreshes happening this year carry bigger significance onscreen as studios are making an active effort to get out of corners they previously painted themselves into or remind audiences what their title characters are all about.
TV-wise, look no further than the aforementioned Friendly Neighborhood and Daredevil: Born Again. The latter series’ first season famously went from being its own thing separate from its Netflix predecessor into a fourth season of the original show that, by the accounts of those who made it, is all the better for the course correction. The initial version of Born Again was in danger of losing its goodwill by dumping OG mainstays like Karen and Foggy, and while the finished product had its flaws, its second season seems poised to provide the true continuation fans of the first Daredevil desire. Meanwhile, Spider-Man is the webhead’s first cartoon in forever that’s focused on Peter Parker more than the other superheroes he hangs around with, spider-themed or otherwise. That’s been a surprisingly tough ask of his cinematic and TV experiences in the past decade, but this show seems to have found the balance between an expansive cast and making them all orbit its teen lead.
On the big screen, it took no time at all for Marvel’s Multiverse Saga to feel like a bust, exacerbated by an erratic track record in quality and a central villain not bringing his A-game. MCU heads who chiefly interact via the movies were given a reprieve from all that in Thunderbolts*, which sets all that aside to focus on a team of misfit antiheroes coming together. While not a box-office smash, it successfully got waning fans back onboard by mainly focusing on the problem at hand rather than a looming threat years away. For those fans, the stealth Avengers movie was Marvel’s most successful play at recapturing the glory days, so much so that you wish they could get another movie under their belt before their scheduled appearance in 2026’s Avengers: Secret Wars.
Depending on who you ask, such glory days are long gone when it comes to Superman and the Fantastic Four. Both heroes’ past movies have been dinged for being overcomplicated and straying too far from the source material. That’s not the case with their current installments, and of the two, Fantastic Four: First Steps has the easier hurdle to clear. By design, it looks much more faithful to the comics, from its retrofuturist 1960s aesthetic to the heroes’ dynamic and the comics-accurate look of planet-eating baddie Galactus. Superman similarly touts its fidelity to its pen-and-ink history in key ways, like the return of the red trunks and Superman himself being an earnest dork whose innate goodness makes him stand out, both in the movie’s world and next to the controversial DCEU version starring Henry Cavill and helmed by Zack Snyder.
There’s long been a schism between fans and detractors of the DCEU, and once a Superman reboot was announced in the wake of Black Adam’s… interesting post-credits gamble, that divide only deepened. A refresh for the character always seemed inevitable, and something the DCEU itself was flirting with in the immediate aftermath of 2017’s Justice League, but Gunn at the helm made it a more enticing prospect that certainly seems to have paid off: reactions for Superman have pointed out its appreciably earnest, even corny, take on the hero that’s hit the character’s traditional mark. Fantastic Four isn’t out yet, but millions online flocked to watch the debut trailers for both films. It’s easy to imagine much of the excitement around them, which has resulted in a Barbenheimer-alike called “SuperFantastic“, can be owed to the freshness of just being themselves and letting that be the big hook to lure audiences in.
Looking ahead, the next superhero projects taking the reboot approach are 2026’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day and eventually, the X-Men. The latter is tricky since, cinematically, the Fox movies have always been stuck in the past, to the degree that Deadpool 2 mocked the heroes’ larger race allegory as being out of date. It’s not even a problem specific to the films, as seen in the recent nostalgia revival X-Men ’97 and the end of Krakoa in the comics in favor of a more traditional status quo. Unlike the other films and shows mentioned here, Marvel may have to put the work in with the X-Men and introduce audiences to something they haven’t seen from these characters before, rather than just relying on a more diverse roster or just flexing on its own perceived greatness.
Like readers of the Big Two’s comics output, audiences have become fairly used to reboots on the big screen in the past 20 years. A more recent trend, though, is studios using these reboots as a statement of intent with what they want to do with these characters going forward. That could give Superman and other projects a distinct edge over simply having a reboot just to have it, and time will tell if audiences are willing to help those studios see that ambition through to the end.
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