2025 Summer Movie Preview

Summer movies are right around the corner (Thunderbolts* is in theaters as early as tonight). This Saturday is Free Comic Book Day. It's time to publish my yearly summer movie preview!**

For the longest time I referred to the group of missionaries Alma recruits in Alma 31 as the Dream Team (named after the USA Olympic Basketball team of 1992). Like that basketball team, Alma's missionary force had a number of powerful missionaries who did amazing things on their own. And like the Basketball Dream Team, Alma's team also included an out-of-place end of the bench guy in Alma's son Corianton.***

Recently, thought, I've been referring to Alma's missionary force as the Avengers, a super power group who join forces for a special mission.

But now, I'm thinking the best name for the band of missionaries that Alma takes with him to preach to the Zoramites might be the Thunderbolts (without the asterisk, please!). The whole gimmick of the Thunderbolts is that they were all various levels of villains before turning to the light. Likewise, pretty much everyone in Alma's group (with the exception of his sone Shiblon) had a lot of repenting to do in their lives. Now we just need to find out if the Thunderbolts* are as good as Alma and Amulek's back to back sermons found in Alma 32-34.

*This isn't actually a footnote, the movie's title strangely includes an asterisk--a terrible thing for a blogger who's been using them for years. 

**A Summer Movie Preview that in 15 years has never actually previewed any movies.

***For the Basketball Dream Team, the out-of-place bench guy was Christian Laettner, one of the most accomplished college basketball players ever who was selected over more worthy NBA players when the powers to be decided that the team had to have at least one amateur on the roster.

*Again, not a footnote.