Show Time: A Statistical Recap of Filmsplosion 2025

Well, it’s been over a month since Filmsplosion 2025 dropped. I’ve no doubt you’ve all listened to it by now. If not, don’t read the rest of this post, as we’ll be looking at all the Nerds’ Top 10 lists.

As is tradition, I assigned every movie a scored based on where it was on a Nerd’s list. If it was their #1 film, I gave it 10 points; if #2, 9 points; and so on until our #10 films received 1 point each. If it appeared on multiple lists, then it has a combined score.

(Hard to believe, but this is now my seventh time doing this: Filmsplosion 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.)

Now, we’ll get to which movies had the highest average score, but first, we’ll look at the movies that scored the highest overall.

Here are the HIGHEST SCORED MOVIES of Filmsplosion 2025:

  1. Wake Up Dead Man – 20
  2. Sinners – 17
  3. One Battle After Another – 16
  4. Superman – 15
  5. TIE – Tron: Ares, Friendship – 12
  6. TIE – K-Pop Demon Hunters, The Day the Earth Blew Up, Thunderbolts – 10
  7. Wicked: For Good – 9.5

Now, if we look at these films’ average scores (total score divided by number of lists it appeared on), the order is a bit different.

THE AVERAGE SCORES for the four highest-scoring movies:

  1. Superman – 7.5
  2. Wake Up Dead Man – 6.7
  3. TIE: Tron: Ares, Friendship – 6
  4. Sinners – 5.6
  5. One Battle After Another – 5.3
  6. Wicked: For Good – 4.75

I guess when you look at the math, it makes sense that Superman ended up at the top of the list. Both Brad and Ryan had it really high. But it seems like it should’ve gone to Sinners or OBAA or Tron: Ares for how much the other Nerds talked about them.

Now, looking at the 10 highest-grossing movies of 2025, in terms of domestic box office, five of the Top 10 appeared on someone’s list: Zootopia 2, Superman, Wicked: For Good, Sinners and Fantastic Four: First Steps.

But, if we look on the worldwide box office, only four films appeared on our lists, and three of them were mine: Ne Zha 2, Zootopia 2, F1: The Movie and Superman. My list definitely leaned on blockbusters this year, while the Nerds’ lists — as usual — relied more on indie films. (But is it really my fault that K-Pop Demon Hunters wasn’t originally released in theaters?)

Granted this is just my opinion, but I really thought the blockbusters this year were fine, but it sounds like the more mid- and low-budget movies were better than usual. Which is saying something. I really enjoyed The Ballad of Wallis Island, which feels like the only true “indie” movie on my list, but there are a few others like Sinners that might fall into that mid-budget range. Not sure.

But, yes, a kinda “meh” year for Blockbusters. I mean, Minecraft and Lilo & Stitch made the worldwide Top 5? And How to Train Your Dragon (the off-brand one) made the Top 10. Jeez. Hollywood is once again getting rewarded for mediocrity. But hopefully all the successful lower-budget films will stand the test of time and be beloved for generations, while these crappy live-action remakes will be forgotten.

And finally, as usual, I wanted to examine our Filmsplosion picks by genre. How many action movies do we have? How many dramas? Superhero flicks? etc.

So, for this assessment, I went by each film’s most basic genre. The five main categories are: animation, action, comedy, drama, horror. Of note, we also have smaller genres of musical, superhero and documentary.

By the way, I’m generalizing which category it’s in based on my own experience in either seeing the movie or watching the trailer, and most were pretty straightforward to categorize. In the few cases where I was uncertain, I went by which genre was listed first on its IMDB page.

So, without further ado, here’s the BREAKDOWN OF THE FILMSPLOSION LISTS BY GENRE:

  1. Comedy (7)
  2. Action (6)
  3. Animation (5)
  4. Horror (4)
  5. TIE: Drama and Superhero (3 each)
  6. Musical (2)
  7. Documentary (1)

Honestly, I’m surprised that Comedy did the best this year. It doesn’t feel like there were that many comedies, outside of like The Naked Gun remake. But that and the other ones we saw were all good enough to make our lists.

Horror took a big drop this year, after being #1 last year. But while I’m not surprised to see Action at #2, Animation taking the #3 spot is shocking. I know I usually give it a boost with my list, but Zach and Ryan helped me this year.

And once again, Dramas are off the podium after a long reign at the top. I’m guessing it’s because we’re missing James and Henry. They really helped carry that category, the way I carry Animation.

Finally, one more thing I’ll note, Superhero returned as an official category this year after being “absent” and getting rolled into Action or Animation the last two years.

I’m positive the new Spider-Man movie will make at least Ryan’s 2026 list, but I do wonder if Avengers: Doomsday or Supergirl will get some love too. Hmmm… time will tell.

Anyway, that’s basically all I’ve got for A Statistical Recap of Filmsplosion 2025!

Thanks to Brad, I put all everyone’s lists below so you can see for yourselves which genre I slated for them. As always, it’s interesting to see how everyone’s lists look by genre:

Corinne

  1. K-Pop Demon Hunters – animation
  2. Wicked: For Good – musical
  3. Wake Up Dead Man – comedy
  4. The Ballad of Wallis Island – comedy
  5. Zootopia 2 – animation
  6. Sinners – horror
  7. Ne Zha 2 – animation
  8. Paddington in Peru – comedy
  9. The Naked Gun – comedy
  10. F1: The Movie – action

Zach

  1. The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie – animation
  2. One Battle After Another – action
  3. Friendship – comedy
  4. Bring Her Back – horror
  5. Wake Up Dead Man – comedy
  6. Sinners – horror
  7. Weapons – horror
  8. Black Bag – drama
  9. Riefenstahl – documentary
  10. TIE – Frankenstein, Wicked: For Good – horror and musical, respectively

Brad

  1. Tron: Ares – action
  2. The Phoenician Scheme – comedy
  3. The Brutalist – drama
  4. Superman – superhero
  5. Wake Up Dead Man – comedy
  6. Hamilton – musical
  7. Friendship – comedy
  8. Roofman – comedy
  9. One Battle After Another – action
  10. Rental Family – drama

Ryan

  1. Thunderbolts – superhero
  2. Predator: Badlands – action
  3. Superman – superhero
  4. Sinners – horror
  5. Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning – action
  6. One Battle After Another – action
  7. Predator: Killer of Killers – animation
  8. Fantastic Four: First Steps – superhero
  9. Tron: Ares – action
  10. The Naked Gun – comedy

Cheers, everyone! Hope to see you all again for Filmsplosion 2026!