The latest adaptation of The War of the Worlds is as terrible as you’ve heard. I think the best comment was when someone online said it should’ve been an e-mail. It sucks that H.G. Wells’ book fell into the public domain because his estate should sue the filmmakers. If you thought the 1996 version of The Island of Dr. Moreau was bad, this movie makes it look like Casablanca.
Granted the Steven Spielberg version released in 2005 wasn’t the best but it worked despite the plot being ludicrous as times. Around the same time, The Asylum made their own version with Tom Cruise’s The Outsiders co-star C. Thomas Howell in the lead. Even though I heard it got bad reviews as I’ve not seen it, at least it was made cheap and to capitalize off the Spielberg/Cruise collaboration. It wasn’t trying to be anything than a mockbluster.
This movie is basically an Amazon commercial for an hour and a half. And since it’s streaming on Amazon Prime, you’d think people would know what Amazon is. But there’s a character who is an Amazon Prime delivery driver. There is a plot point where a package is delivered through Amazon. And even a person is gifted a $1,000 gift card from, yes, Amazon. There’s also a reference about searching what is in people’s Amazon cart’s.
Is this like in Idiocracy where if they keep dropping a brand name, they get paid more money? Apparently, Ice Cube channels Jeffrey Wright with grey hairs in his beard and glasses so we can buy him playing Will Radford, who works for the Department of Homeland Security in D.C. as a computer operator who handles a program that he can monitor anyone. (Yes, the man who wrote “Fuck that Police” is now working for The Man.) Yet, Will seems to spend more time monitoring what his daughter, Faith (Iman Benson), who’s pregnant is eating.
He’s also searching for a hacker who is know as the “Disruptor” which is also his son, David (Henry Hunter Hall). Whoops, sorry, spoiler alert! Not that you care. You’ve probably seen the clip of Ice Cube saying, “It’s you! It’s you!” badly as he discovers his son is a hacker. Yet, even though he had the technology to change the filter on the Disruptor’s distorted voice he uses in videos, he doesn’t do it until the world is going to shit.
Meteors have been sent with aliens and tripod like huge machines. It’s a lot like the 2005 version but they don’t want to vaporize us. Hell, the TV series which was a continuation of the 1953 movie chose to have the aliens assimilate their bodies with humans. But no, they’re after our data, sending these little bug-like computer creatures that are cyborg-hybrids or something. I don’t know it’s never made clear.
This is one of the most pointless, confusing movies ever that thinks that all they can do is throw a lot of science and computer talk and it sounds important. The footage of planes falling look as fake as the stock footage Edward D. Wood Jr. used in Plan 9 From Outer Space. As a matter of fact, this will be the 21st century equivalent of that movie. I know it’s only 2025 but I can’t think of any other bad sci-fi alien invasion movie so far. I mean, Moonfall was pretty bad, but it’s more like Robot Monster. I wouldn’t be surprised if this ended up on many “Worst Movies” lists and gets a lot of awards at the Razzies. If anything, this movie is a reason to keep the Golden Raspberry Awards going.
I feel very bad for Eva Langoria who has the distinction of appearing in two of the worst movies of 2025, both streaming on Amazon Prime one week apart. The only difference is that she’s supposed to play a science doctor who works for NASA here while in The Pickup she is a Latino wife stereotype.
Also, this movie is the latest in the format of screenlife, i.e. where everything takes place on a computer screen or screens. I can understand the concept where not everyone would be running around outside as the aliens cause destruction. But when Spielberg chose to keep the plane crash off screen and show the characters hearing it as they huddled in a house scared, it was far more thrilling than anything in this movie, especially when we saw that huge jetliner ripped opened.
This format has been used in the last 10 years but if you’re going to show a whole movie that is someone looking at a computer screen, you better give them a better reason than to search for items on Amazon. The fact that the government has technology where they can hack into our smart phones and laptops to see what we’re buying or looking at online is more scary and more probable than an alien invasion attack.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 