Awful new edition of the science fiction classic
When I discovered the existence of a new edition of H.G. Wells’s masterpiece, I was immediately interested. Remember this: the pioneer of science fiction literature, H.G. Wells, published “The War of the Worlds” as a book in 1898. The story gained worldwide fame when it was presented as a radio play in 1938. It sounded so realistic that many people panicked in the face of this supposed alien invasion.
If you were to watch the new version of War of the Worlds on Amazon Prime Video in 2025, there is a real chance that people could run away in panic again, but first things first:
This is What War of the Worlds is About
What is it about? Will Radford, the character played by Ice Cube, is a surveillance and threat analysis expert at the Department of Homeland Security. He sits in front of a computer for the entire 89 minutes and monitors — well, everything. The rest of the story is roughly similar to the film adaptation, which was directed by Steven Spielberg in 2005 and starred Tom Cruise in the lead role: giant alien robot monsters that aim to subjugate the Earth.
While the original 1898 book was a satire on an evil empire and colonialism, the Steven Spielberg film was, of course, popcorn cinema in the finest Hollywood style with a disaster movie feel. The latest iteration also uses these doomsday elements. However, “new” is relative. This film, which also stars Eva Longoria as NASA employee Dr. Sandra Salas alongside Ice Cube, actually completed filming in 2020.
Back to the story: computer security analyst Radford suddenly observed countless meteorites hitting the Earth alongside his everyday surveillance work. Giant creatures gradually emerge from them. They look like robots that could be mistaken for Transformers, but are actually “half organic, half cybernetic”, as informed in the movie.
Ice Cube not only has to contend with the aliens, but also faces various family issues. As if that wasn’t enough, he also uncovered a diabolical government conspiracy.
War of the Worlds 2025: The Signs were there that it wouldn’t Work Out
To be honest, I liked the idea of the movie: a very classic science fiction story, told from a completely new perspective. By “all-new” in this case, director Rich Lee meant that they used the Screenlife format to tell the story. This means that you are constantly looking at the protagonists’ smartphones, monitors, and notebooks, or at images from surveillance and satellite cameras.
This is a fresh narrative style that — if well executed — can offer a particularly immersive experience. At best, we feel much closer to the story. In this case, however, it worked out to be rather mediocre…or even disappointing. And that brings us to the clues that warned us in advance that this movie might be a steaming pile of crap.
The Screenlife idea here is not meant to give old material a fresh new look. Instead, it was more or less due to the pandemic, and the limited possibilities were associated with the situation. As we all know, people were restricted in their movement at the time, which meant that the film crew couldn’t hang around the streets and in the studios to shoot. The trailer already gave us a hint that we were dealing with scenes that looked as if the actors had simply filmed themselves privately in their own gardens.
Universal completed the film in 2020 and wanted to release it in cinemas, but instead left it lying around for five years before throwing it out of the blue onto the Amazon streaming platform without much warning or even an advertising budget, speaking volumes of its ‘importance’.
Perhaps it is not a guarantee for a bad movie, but there is at least an indication: it is actually the very first movie that Rich Lee tried to direct. He may have an official career as a music video producer (Billie Eilish, Eminem, Lana del Rey, and many more), but this is his film debut.
Where’s the Alien Invasion when You Need it Most?
As brave as I am, I ignored all the warning signs and plunged into the action. Are there spoilers to follow? Why, yes! Don’t continue reading if that bothers you. But trust me: five minutes of additional reading here might save you from throwing 90 minutes of your valuable life out of the window!
We begin with the brave keyboard warrior Radford. Ice Cube was impressive in depicting that he is not made for such roles. For almost 90 minutes, he just lounges around in his chair, seated in front of the computer, and has to use clever acting and appropriate facial expressions to depict the world is ending around him. Spoiler alert: No, inspired acting and appropriate facial expressions are not his thing.
At the beginning, everything is still peaceful, and he performs his secret agent surveillance duties. He then taps into this or that surveillance camera to monitor what’s going on in the world, listens to the dialogue of random pedestrians, checks out the NSA — just a typical agent’s day. At first, I wondered why, with his thousand windows, he always checked out the exact image he needed in a matter of seconds. However, I very quickly accepted the fact that this is probably how it works when you really know what you’re doing in the government.
Ice Cube simply Sees Everything!
Fortunately, he can not only access surveillance cameras and microphones, but also just about everything. When he’s not looking wistfully at his deceased wife’s Facebook page, he’s monitoring his kids. He knows where they hang out, but also knows his daughter’s pulse rate, that she’s pregnant, and what she has in the fridge. Boy, oh boy, isn’t that creepy!
If the movie wants to convey how zealous data collection and data surveillance can be a real problem, this portrayal of a nosy father is actually counterintuitive. Somewhere between the surveillance of his family and the rest of the world, trouble is brewing. His NASA-based girlfriend Eva Longoria, who calls everyone throughout the movie, tells him about strange weather phenomena. Shortly afterwards, the aforementioned countless meteorites shoot through a blurred image.
The Screenlife narrative style annoyed me very early on in the movie. We constantly see Ice Cube interacting via video call with a handful of people who populate the movie with him. Whenever there is actually action in the form of attacking giant robot-alien hybrids, all we actually see is shaky cam, ala Blair Witch style. People are running away from something, and when the aliens are shown, they don’t even look that good.
Pandemic Pitfalls
The “Tesla scene” is also cool: We remember that the movie was already completed in 2020. At some point, Ice Cube wants to get his now-injured daughter to safety. So he simply drove a Tesla to her remotely and chauffeured her out of the danger zone in the car. You can already see this Tesla speeding through empty streets without a driver in 2020. Maybe he should have told Elon Musk how it works.
Speaking of empty roads: How realistic is it for humanity to face an alien invasion without any traffic jams, people running around wildly, and absolute chaos on the roads? This culminates in the daughter telling her dad, “Everything is destroyed here” — but at the same time, we see her simply strolling through empty streets where nothing has been destroyed.
That’s just the way it is when you’re not allowed on the streets during the pandemic. From a cinematic point of view, it might have been a smart move to blur this camera shot as well. Alternatively, they could have thrown a few more dollars into the CGI coffers, which were presumably already very low anyway. As it is, it’s just another absurd scene.
Of course, an Alien Attack Alone is not Enough
We watch a committed Ice Cube as he hears the following words from the White House: “To save us all, I see no other option than to start the war of the worlds.” Start? Seriously? Giant aliens are stomping through our cities around the world, and over in Washington, they believe that we must now proactively begin the War of the Worlds?
Incidentally, it’s funny when our main character brings Fox News and other TV news channels onto the screen in between: When they report that the president is about to be briefed, you have to believe that the TV viewer knows more than the most powerful man in the world. And why can all the news channels summarize all the events virtually in real-time?
I have long since subconsciously relegated this movie from the science fiction genre to “comedy”. What I see is usually unintentionally funny. This is especially true of poor Ice Cube, who has to convey the end of the world, but has nothing but his face to do so. The way he skillfully moderates away everything he sees on his smartphone camera with various shouts of “Oh no!” and a frightened look — that’s pretty special.
Pubescent Kids Are Always Getting into Trouble
It turns out that Ice Cube not only has the problem of getting his family on track and saving the world from aliens at the same time, he also uncovers a conspiracy. Under the codename Goliath, there’s an actual secret movement going on that brings together all the data the planet has to offer. You know what’s silly: the aliens are only there because so much data is being collected, since they feed on data.
How does Ice Cube even know that this secret amount of data exists? Well, his son reported it, who else? Super agent William Radford can actually see everything. But when something really bad is going on under his nose and the government is being infiltrated, his son has to help. I’m no longer surprised that this son turns out to be a world-class hacker. Incidentally, one thought only occurred to me after the movie: if Ice Cube had listened to his boy from the beginning, the whole movie would have been unnecessary!
Ice Cube finally realized that he has to team up with the hackers, because that’s the only way to save humanity. It’s cool when everything stays in the family. Until then, however, the aliens are happily crunching through the world’s data, including Radford’s deceased wife’s Facebook page. He listens to his wife’s voice message one last time before this data also disappears. This loss of data is shown by his wife’s voice getting slower and slower. Similar to a Walkman whose batteries have run out.
Thanks for Saving the World, Amazon!
One of the final punchlines is that a USB stick is needed to save the world, but Ice Cube doesn’t have one at home. So, who can help put the aliens to flight? Amazon, of course! Thanks to Jeff Bezos’ Prime Air drone, the USB stick, which first had to be ordered from Amazon, arrived at the server room where Ice Cube is located at the last second.
If you ask me, this is probably how the movie became the most expensive Amazon clip of all time. As prominently as the Tesla car or Microsoft products were carefully placed, these two companies have certainly also thrown something into Universal’s coffers. What remains after 90 minutes? The aliens are defeated, Amazon and Ice Cube have saved the Earth, and (almost) everyone is happy. The author, on the other hand, sat helplessly on the couch and wondered why he was spending his free time on garbage like this.
There’s no mistake about it: this movie is like a car accident. The actors were piss poor, but wouldn’t have a chance to shine anywhere in this work of art anyway. The viewer doesn’t recognize much, the story is just as hare-brained as the dialogues, and once again, it’s confirmed that ‘well-intentioned’ is truly different from ‘well-made’. Subtly, the movie wants to draw attention to data and privacy issues, which doesn’t really work when the hero of the movie spies on his family in an overbearing manner.
Rotten Tomatoes rated it 0(!) percent (critics), while viewers gave it a gracious 12 percent. Listen to these people, listen to me, and save yourself from watching this movie. If I had to think, would I rather watch the movie again or be attacked by aliens? The end of the world would suddenly be the lesser evil.