What Hollywood Got Wrong About Fatherhood in 2025

Fatherhood was everywhere in 2025’s biggest movies. From major blockbusters like Superman, Frankenstein, and One Battle After Another, to independent films like Sovereign, foreign films like No Other Choice, horror films like The Conjuring: Last Rites, and even faith-based films like The Last Rodeo, dads got center stage. Additionally, The Fantastic Four: First Steps is the first in the franchise to focus on parenthood. Unfortunately, most of these films say the same thing: fathers have bad instincts when it comes to parenting and can only be a good parent when they learn to follow a woman’s lead. This encourages a culture that devalues the unique contributions of fathers to children’s well-being, even as research continues to confirm their importance. 

A Common Theme: The Bumbling Dad

Legendary filmmaker Guiellmel del Toro’s 2025 rendition of Frankenstein heavily emphasizes how Dr. Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) abuses his creation (Jacob Elordi) because he’s repeating the abuse he experienced from his own father (Charles Dance). The titular protagonist is treated as a child with affection by his beloved mother (Mia Goth)and with coldness by his father, who punishes and insults him to turn him into a great physician like himself. When Frankenstein’s mother dies, he dedicates himself to becoming such a good physician that he can bring the dead to life. But when he recreates life—in the form of “Frankenstein’s Monster”—he treats him as cruelly as his father did him, which stunts the creature's growth. And it’s the woman Frankenstein loves—Lady Elizabeth—who treats the creature with tenderness, a tenderness that causes the creature to learn to speak more than one word. Eventually, Frankenstein dies and asks for his “son’s” forgiveness.

This theme of fathers who mess up their kids by either their presence or their absence is common in this year’s films. Sometimes, that means harsh fathers who abuse and oppress their sons like in Bruce Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, The Carpenter’s Son, or the film Sovereign. Other times, fathers wound their children by abandoning or deprioritizing them for their career, such as in Wicked: For Good. 

Movies like Sovereign portray parental harshness as somewhat endemic to father culture. The film follows two dads and their sons: Jerry (Nick Offerman) and Joe Kane (Jacob Tremblay): a father and son who identify as Sovereign Citizens (a group of anti-government extremists), and John (Dennis Quaid) and Adam Bouchart (Thomas Mann). 

Jerry Kane is a father traumatized by the death of his wife and daughter, which (the film indicates) radicalizes him to live and raise his son as radically independent. This translates into abusive behavior, at times, and arguably leads to his son’s death. Once he threatens to shoot his son, and he beats him for taking too long to get ready, when they’re running from the cops. In this instance, Joe runs away. Jerry eventually catches him.

Jerry: “I need you to be strong.”
Joe: “No! I want to go home!”
Jerry: “We need to conquer now.”
Joe: “I want—I want mom!”

This theme—that boys need the mother’s affection in addition to a father’s “tough love”—is also found in John and Adam Bouchart’s father-son relationship in the film. John is disappointed that his son Adam is picking up his newborn baby when he fusses rather than leaving him. Adam ignores John, which causes his father to complain about it to John’s wife, Patty, telling her that “we never let Adam act like that.” Patty responds: “Well, that’s because you were always riding him. You still are. You think every nail needs a hammer.” She goes on to advise him to give his son a break and praise him sometimes. 

The theme of fathers who mess up their kids by either their presence or their absence is common in this year’s films.

Eventually, these plots converge, and both Jerry and John’s sons die. John comes back from the funeral to find Adam’s baby fussing and considers for a moment before he picks up the baby to comfort him—signaling that he’s finally coming around to a more nurturing approach to parenting. 

Angel Studios’ Sketch also deals with the trauma of a family losing a mom. The movie follows a young girl named Amber Wyatt (Bianca Belle) who copes with her grief by drawing monstrous creatures in a notebook. When her sketchbook falls into a magic pond, the creatures come to life and threaten to destroy the town, forcing her and her family to band together to defeat them.

A big theme of the film is how, while the dad and son view the sister as troubled because of what she draws, she’s actually the only one dealing with her grief in a healthy way. The dad, Taylor (Tony Hale), doesn’t want to talk about his wife—even removing pictures of her from  the house–and is determined to just “get past it.” The son Jack (Kue Lawrence) tries to bring his mother back from the dead with the magic pond—a decision Amber chides him for. 

“What do you think is going to happen, Jack? You’re just going to bring mom home and say ‘Surprise!’ And then what? I’ll feel better?”
Jack responds: “What’s wrong with that? Why do I keep getting in trouble for trying to fix stuff? And yes. You would feel better. We all would.”

Amber’s aunt, Liz (D'Arcy Carden), herself tells Taylor that his behavior is unhealthy: “I think you should stop worrying so much about the girl who’s drawing pictures of her pain and worry a little bit more about the boys who are ignoring theirs.”

These movies aren’t arguing that dads are inherently bad. But they come across as saying that the kind of parenting dads most often do is bad. Superman contrasts two dads: Superman’s alien dad, Jor-El (Bradley Cooper), and human dad Jonathan Kent (Pruitt Taylor Vince). Jonathan tells Superman (David Corenswet) not to listen to his alien dad because he is demanding Superman follow his plans for him, which is not what good parents do.

Even the dads who are good see themselves as inferior to their wives. In The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic (Pedro Pascal) is portrayed as an analytical genius who wants to “understand” and “figure out” his son, who he fears will be a freak. His wife, Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), simply accepts their son and lavishes him with love. Reed admits he sees his own parenting style as inferior:

Most fathers want their sons to look exactly like them, inside and out. But… I don’t want you to be like me. There’s something wrong with me. Always has been. The more I look at you, the less I know. And the less I know, the more scared I am.

What Hollywood Gets Right

It’s worth noting that, in one sense, Hollywood is right: dads do parent differently from moms. Studies show that dads are often stricter and wield more authority. Dads tend to engage in more “rough and tumble” play with their children. Men are more likely to look at solving problems as the solution to their mental health rather than expressing feelings. 

But where these movies go wrong is in portraying these differences primarily as weaknesses in men rather than complementary strengths. As the Institute for Family Studies reported:

Fathers tend to be particularly attuned to developing children’s physical, emotional, and intellectual independence... Fathers are also more likely than mothers to encourage children to take risks, while also ensuring safety and security, thus helping children develop confidence, navigate new transitions, and bravely confront unfamiliar situations. 

As Richard Reeves notes in Of Boys and Men, women are much better than men at nurturing their kids, but men are better at teaching their kids how to grow up to gain independence. 

Now, it’s obviously true that this more masculine style of parenting can go wrong. And this year’s Hollywood movies give vivid examples of exactly how. Research shows that for a parent’s teaching to be positive for the child, it needs to be tough but also warm (known as “authoritative” as opposed to “authoritarian” or “permissive”). 

Movies like Frankenstein show what happens when parenting is authoritarian rather than authoritative. The problem is that seemingly every movie spotlighting fathers this past year highlights the darker side, with very little light—and with seemingly no examples of mom-coded nurturing ever going wrong. This can distort how we see real-life parental relationships. 

Hollywood gets one thing right: dads parent differently than moms. But where the movies of 2025 go wrong is in portraying these differences primarily as weaknesses rather than strengths.

Things that are often seen as “traditionally masculine” roles, such as protecting and providing, repeatedly end up being sources of corruption for men. Both South Korean anti-capitalist satire No Other Choice and A24 dark comedy Death of a Unicorn follow fathers who kill and exploit others to take care of their families. When even good dads try to save or protect their kids—like in The Conjuring: Last Rites or One Battle After Another—they end up largely useless. Some movies are mixed on this. Nobody 2 portrays the dad’s violence as harmful to his family one minute and good the next. Weapons features a father whose obsessive desire to find his son leads to his son’s rescue—but only after he teams up with and starts listening to the woman he previously accused of the crime. 

This reflects the trend in psychology and our culture to see traditional masculine norms as drivers of toxic masculinity. A 2018 report by the American Psychological Association explicitly calling traditional masculinity “marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression” influenced many in the field and wider culture. But this report was itself criticized in a 2023 study for causing harm by pathologizing natural biological sex differences and discouraging some men from seeking therapy.

Why Hollywood Vilifies Dads

So why does Hollywood often portray fathers in a negative light? In many ways, this is nothing new. After all, the inept dad has long been the purview of sitcoms like The Simpsons and Everybody Loves Raymond. But it’s also hard not to see contemporary politics here. As the culture wars are starting to divide along gender lines, men are more likely to vote right, and women—particularly single women—are more likely to vote left. And on the left, the “maternal” values are strongly focused on as synonymous with “correct” values. 

It’s therefore not surprising that the main movies this past year that have praised men’s parenting style have come from conservative religious filmmakers and studios. Guns & Moses, written and directed by the Jewish filmmaker Salvador Litvak and his wife Nina, follows a Chabad Rabbi (Mark Feuerstein) trying to protect his family and congregation from a murderous conspiracy. The fact that he takes responsibility to protect his flock is praised, and his moral instincts about the murderer are validated. Likewise, Angel Studios’ The Last Rodeo follows a retired bull rider named Joe (Neal McDonough) who goes back for one last ride to help pay for his grandson’s life-saving surgery, which puts him at odds with his protective daughter. At the end, she thanks him. 

This suggests a possible future where portrayals of fatherhood are increasingly politicized in film and entertainment. Hollywood may double down on “bad dads” and conservative media on “good dads.” This is a problem, as things that are good for people—like faith and fatherhood—shouldn’t be politicized. But the reality is they increasingly are, something that reflects larger national trends, where having kids and being religious are increasingly right-wing coded as well. 

American cinema is—for now—arguably the most influential storyteller in the world. The way Hollywood teaches us to see the world, and in particular family life, is a big part of how we see it. Unfortunately, its portrayal of fatherhood largely encourages a devaluing of fathers' unique strengths just when they’re needed most. Hopefully, alternative storytellers and growing research will help filmmakers share a better and more accurate vision of fatherhood.

Joseph Holmes is an NYC-based film and culture critic. He's written for outlets such as Forbes, The New York Times, Christianity Today, World Magazine, Religion Unplugged, Relevant, and Religion & Liberty. He co-hosts a weekly podcast called The Overthinkers.