Best English Action Movies of 2025

Dean DeBlois · 125 min · Universal Pictures / DreamWorks

On the remote island of Berk, Vikings live under constant threat from dragons that raid their livestock and destroy their homes. Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III-an inventive but awkward teen and the son of Chief Stoick the Vast-struggles to fit into a culture that values brute strength. During a dragon attack, he secretly injures a rare Night Fury but, instead of killing it, forms a bond with the creature he names Toothless. Their friendship reveals that dragons are not the monsters the Vikings believe them to be.

Cast: Mason Thames, Nico Parker, Gerard Butler

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Box office: $636.4 million worldwide

AI verdict: How to Train Your Dragon's 78% RT score sets it apart from 2025's other live-action remakes — having the original director return clearly mattered to critics and audiences alike.

Joseph Kosinski · 155 min · Apple Original Films / Warner Bros.

Dubbed "the greatest that never was," Sonny Hayes was FORMULA 1's most promising phenom of the 1990s until an accident on the track nearly ended his career. Thirty years later, he's a nomadic racer-for-hire when he's approached by his former teammate Ruben Cervantes, owner of a struggling FORMULA 1 team that is on the verge of collapse. Ruben convinces Sonny to come back to FORMULA 1 for one last shot at saving the team and being the best in the world. He'll drive alongside Joshua Pearce, the team's hotshot rookie intent on setting his own pace. But as the engines roar, Sonny's past catches up with him and he finds that in FORMULA 1, your teammate is your fiercest competition--and the road to redemption is not something you can travel alone.

Cast: Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Javier Bardem

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Box office: $631.6 million worldwide

AI verdict: F1: The Movie's combination of high vote volume, 82% RT score, and $631.6M gross marks it as 2025's most broadly successful original (non-sequel, non-remake) blockbuster.

James Cameron · 197 min · 20th Century Studios / Lightstorm

The Return of the Threat: When the RDA (Resources Development Administration) returns to Pandora with a more aggressive military force, Colonel Miles Quaritch is resurrected as a "Recombinant"-a Na'vi avatar embedded with his human memories-to lead a specialized task force dedicated to hunting down Jake Sully.

Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver

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Box office: $760.4 million worldwide (still in release)

AI verdict: Avatar: Fire and Ash's dip to 66% RT (from prior entries' higher scores) suggests critical patience for the franchise's scale may be thinning, even as box office numbers stay robust.

Jake Schreier · 164 min · Marvel Studios / Disney

A team of reformed supervillains is recruited for covert missions by a secret organization. They navigate internal conflict, moral dilemmas, and external threats while attempting to prove loyalty and effectiveness. The film blends superhero action, intrigue, and ensemble dynamics, exploring redemption, trust, and the blurred line between heroism and villainy in a high-stakes environment.

Cast: Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Julia Louis-Dreyfus

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Box office: $382.4 million worldwide

AI verdict: Thunderbolts* is a mid-tier MCU hit by ratings, but an underperformer by box office—suggesting the market for ensemble team-up films may be cooling, even when quality is high.

James Gunn · 129 min · DC Studios / Warner Bros.

Set within a new DC universe. A few years into his heroics, Superman embarks on a personal quest to understand his Kryptonian heritage and mix it with his upbringing as mild mannered Clark Kent. But things get complicated when ruthless industrialist Lex Luthor frames Superman for an international incident and plans to put himself on top by bringing Superman down. Now with aid from Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and the Justice Gang, Superman must embrace his lineage and fully become the hero we deserve in order to stop Luthor's plot and save the world.

Cast: David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, Nicholas Hoult

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Box office: $615.2 million worldwide

AI verdict: Superman succeeds as both a spectacle and a character study. At $615M worldwide, it proves audiences still embrace the big red cape—and Gunn's willingness to interrogate what that symbol means in a cynical world.

Dean Fleischer Camp · 108 min · Walt Disney Pictures

A lonely Hawaiian girl befriends a runaway alien, helping to mend her fragmented family.

Cast: Maia Kealoha, Sydney Agudong, Chris Sanders

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Box office: $423.8 million worldwide

AI verdict: Lilo & Stitch's box office success ($423.8M) despite middling reviews (53 Metacritic) confirms Disney's live-action remake formula still works commercially, even when critics remain lukewarm.

Gareth Edwards · 133 min · Universal Pictures / Amblin

Five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion, the planet's ecology has proven largely inhospitable to dinosaurs. Those remaining exist in isolated equatorial environments with climates resembling the one in which they once thrived. The three most colossal creatures across land, sea and air within that tropical biosphere hold, in their DNA, the key to a drug that will bring miraculous life-saving benefits to humankind. Covert operations expert Zora Bennett is contracted to lead a skilled team on a top-secret mission to secure the genetic material. When Zora's operation intersects with a civilian family whose boating expedition was capsized by marauding aquatic dinos, they all find themselves stranded on a forbidden island that had once housed an undisclosed research facility for Jurassic Park. There, in a terrain populated by dinosaurs of vastly different species, they come face-to-face with a sinister, shocking discovery that has been hidden from the world for decades.

Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey

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Box office: $869.1 million worldwide

AI verdict: Jurassic World: Rebirth's middling 50% RT score against a near-billion-dollar gross confirms the franchise now runs almost entirely on brand recognition rather than critical momentum.