An alien invasion looks pretty good about now. Is Ice Cube's War of the Worlds on Amazon really as bad as everyone is saying?

An alien invasion looks pretty good about now.

Is Ice Cube's War of the Worlds on Amazon really as bad as everyone is saying?

An alien invasion looks pretty good about now.

By Jordan Hoffman

Published on August 7, 2025 04:52PM EDT

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Ice Cube, fighting off alien invaders the comfortable way. Credit:

With the barrage of content streaming at us with the ferocity of weaponized meteors, one can be forgiven for missing the memo about every new movie. Something that could easily fall through the cracks is a new version of H.G. Wells' classic tale of sci-fi terror, *War of the Worlds, *premiering on Amazon Prime, starring Ice Cube, and directed by music video veteran Rich Lee, making his feature film debut.

However, when the first reviews for this project came back, every single one of them was negative, resulting in a 0 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. This rare feat led to public ridicule, prompting Cube's son, O'Shea Jackson Jr., to chime in on X and somewhat defend the project. (He simply pointed out that it was shot during the pandemic, and it has been sitting on a shelf for five years.) So, before anything else, is this movie *really *that bad?

The answer is... absolutely not. It's certainly *stupid*, but it's also a great deal of fun. *War of the Worlds *(2025) is never boring; it is filled with entertaining lines, and it has a cheese factor that is perfectly self-aware. (To wit: Ice Cube shouting "move, bitch, get out the way!" at an alien tendril blocking his path certainly has a spring in its step.) The problem is that Rotten Tomatoes requires a binary yea-or-nay vote, and only about 20 critics weighed in by the time headlines emerged about it being an all-time turkey.

But the old saying goes that there's no such thing as bad publicity, and this is an excellent case study. People are now on alert and hopefully ordering out for pizza, cracking open a sixer, and getting ready to chomp into this new dumbass classic. No one who watches this in that context will be anything less than delighted.

Ice Cube says fourth 'Friday' movie is moving forward: 'They finally came to their senses'

War of the Worlds

*The War of the Worlds* was first published in 1898, shortly after Wells' *The Time Machine*, *The Island of Doctor Moreau*, and *The Invisible Man*. It was the source material for Orson Welles' groundbreaking radio drama — an early experiment in mock-documentary theater that scared the pants off of listeners who did not clock that it was fiction, and thought invaders from Mars were storming New Jersey. (I guess you can't get a pork roll, egg, and cheese in space.)

Other notable iterations of the story followed — a classic 1950s B-movie produced by George Pal, an epic prog rock concept album from British composer Jeff Wayne, and Steven Spielberg's truly terrifying 2005 Tom Cruise-led film, which most people interpret as the great filmmaker's artistic reaction to the events of 9/11. The point is we shouldn't be too precious about new ways to tell this tale, so a so-called "screenlife"-style rendering is not, on the face of it, a bad idea.

A typical, cluttered frame in Rich Lee's 'War of the Worlds'.

This style of project is one in which almost everything you see is the reflection of one person's computer monitor. Video chats and YouTube clips add to the dynamism, but a lot of the time, you are just watching what some guy is typing. (Gee, whatever happened to escapism? If I wanted to look at chat windows and listen to DM pings, I could stay at work!)

But Ice Cube's character William Radford in *War of the Worlds* has no ordinary job. He's a top-level Department of Homeland Security analyst, and when he's at his post, he's got eyes and ears on everything. Naturally, he uses this for personal reasons, spying on his son David (Henry Hunter Hall), daughter Faith (Iman Benson), and her dopey Amazon delivery driver boyfriend Mark (Devon Bostick, exuding Diet Pete Davidson vibes). For exposition purposes, he also regularly visits the Facebook page of his late wife, so we can hear her final messages and look at old photos.

Well, about 15 minutes in (and after Radford's NASA chum, played by Eva Longoria, alerts him to the radical weather disasters that have been causing mayhem across the globe — as if he would not be aware!), destruction rains down from the heavens, sending the world's security teams into overdrive. Radford springs to action, but from the comfort of his ergonomic chair. Action heroes today!

The 'tripods' as seen in the new 'War of the Worlds'.

Tabs and windows fly all over the screen as Radford Zooms and WhatsApps with government colleagues and his panicked children. It's a smart way to cut down on the special effects budget, since the only glimpses of the malevolent creatures are on wobbly cell phones or glitchy videos.

After several sequences of destruction and the President of the United States formally initiating a War of the Worlds, it comes down to Radford and his kids saving the day. Well, not just them: also some of our most questionable corporations.

An image from Steven Spielberg's 'War of the Worlds' — a far cry from the new one.

When an injured Faith has to get across town, Radford hacks into the self-driving functions of a Tesla to escort her to safety. When the world-saving bio-computer virus must be inserted into a thingamajig and needs to get somewhere, Mark deploys Prime Air, "the future of delivery!" — meaning an Amazon-branded drone. (He also bribes a passerby to help, using a $1,000 Amazon gift card, even though all the power grids have been turned to ash; good luck ordering your paper towels, friend!)

The fact that this movie is streaming on Amazon and Amazon is presented as the only thing that could ever save humanity from an existential threat is hilarious. It goes full ludicrous when Ice Cube confronts a rogue surveillance baddie (Clark Gregg) and shouts, "You risked all of our lives just to spy on people's AMAZON CARTS!!"

Amazon's Jeff Bezos in his space suit. He's gonna' love this movie.

Joe Raedle/Getty

Cube's performance in *War of the Worlds *is a masterclass in mugging and finding new ways to mutter "hell naw." Though there is a visual fluidity to the project, it feels as if someone got scared audiences would not be able to follow the story, so they slapped a coat of voice-over narration atop the entire thing. As such, there is *a lot *of Ice Cube talking to himself, and lines vary from a simple "wait, what?!?" when we see a top secret message to an electrifying "take your intergalactic asses BACK HOME!" when the tables appear to be turned.**

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This movie is a mess, but an uproarious one. Should intelligent beings from a distant star ever come here and get a look at something like this, they would never, ever kill us. So long as they had a sense of humor.**

Original Article on Source

Source: "AOL Movies"

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