Author H.G. Wells wrote the science fiction novel “War of the Worlds” in 1898. It’s a story about aliens and machines attacking earth, and H.G. Wells is regarded by many as the “Father of Science Fiction” because of it.
The book has naturally gone on to spawn many film adaptations, 8 to be specific. The first one we had was in 1953 from Paramount Pictures, the most famous adaptation by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Cruise was released in 2005 (which fun fact: was partially filmed in Rockbridge County), an animated adaptation was released in 2012, there were 4 low budget adaptations that aren’t worth mentioning and of course the now infamous adaptation that was released in 2025 and stars well known songwriter Ice Cube.
It came out to critical acclaim but not at all in a good way. The film was so poorly received that its Rotten Tomatoes score debuted at 0% (it has since moved up to 4%) and the movie got destroyed by online movie critics.
So what happened? Is the film really as bad everyone says it is? The answer to that question is a resounding yes. The film is so poorly made on almost every conceivable level it’s astounding.
Will Radford, played by Ice Cube, works for the government as a surveillance and threat assessment expert at the Department of Homeland Security. He has 2 adult kids, Faith and David Radford, played by Iman Benson and Henry Hunter Hall respectively, who he spies on and ignores their privacy. And together they navigate the current war of the world’s alien invasion…from the comfort of a computer screen.
The thing that sets this movie apart from other war of the world’s adaptations is that almost the entire movie takes place on a computer screen, with the actors communicating through video calling. The reason for this bizarre choice was because the film was actually made during the Covid-19 Pandemic in 2020. However, they sat on the film for 5 years for some reason and now the novelty of that kind of concept has worn off and the movie just looks awkward.
The editing in general is just extremely messy and has the vibe of a youtube video with all the rushing around the screen, jump cuts, obvious ADR (Additional dialogue replacement), stock sound effects and fast paced visuals. This film only had two editors, being Charles Ancelle and Jake York, and I feel so incredibly bad for them because they did all they could to make this film function even just a little bit. But alas even with all the smooth editing of the visuals on the computer screen, it was sadly not enough to save the film.
The writing is so abysmal. If you really wanna know how tone deaf and nonsensical the writing is, there’s a scene where they give a homeless person an Amazon Gift Card which is stupid because you have to fill out your address to activate an Amazon Gift Card in the first place.
Speaking of Amazon, the film is so obviously one giant advertisement for the Amazon company and it’s almost comical how bad they are at hiding it. Among the blatant product placement, one of the main characters, Mark Goodman, played by Devon Bostick, is a delivery driver for Amazon. And if that wasn’t self indulgent enough the main climax of the film has the characters release an ‘Amazon Prime Air’ drone that delivers a USB that is very critical to the film’s ending. The film also heavily implies that they’re using Skype for these video calls due to the iconic Skype jingle that plays when you’re calling someone, the funny thing about this is that Skype is now out of business which further emphasizes how wrong the release timing of this movie was.
The “War of the Worlds” element also feels very poorly implemented. The alien invasion comes out of nowhere which would usually make sense in other adaptations of this story but for this film it feels out of place and not built up in the slightest. And it doesn’t help that the only build up we do have is a brief five second conversation between Will Radford and his friend Sandra, played by Eva Longoria, where basically all they say is “Wow the weather is being really weird right now” which is such a lazy way of exposition.
Overall the film is just bad in every conceivable way but the one redeeming factor of “War of the Worlds” is definitely how fun it is to actually watch. There were countless times watching this where I just sat there in hysterical laughter over how funny the incompetence of the movie was, and so for that I recommend it if you want a comedic experience. Is it the worst movie of 2025? Yeah probably, but it also may just be the funniest movie of 2025 as well.
Fair use image courtesy of: Universal Studios
