Film Review: War of the Worlds

Welcome back to the blog readers. As you all know, science fiction is one of the genres that I love the most because it allows for us to explore some familiar tropes and questions with new ideas and ways to think about the mortal world we live in. One of the staples of the science fiction genre over the last century plus would have to be War of the Worlds, a novel that has been adapted into every possible medium: television series, television film, radio show, and theatrical film. Never have we gotten a screenlife version of this story, and I am very nervous to see how this would go. Would it succeed in that endeavor? Stick around to find out.

War of the Worlds was directed by Rich Lee from a screenplay by Kenneth A. Golde and Marc Hyman and a story by Golde, based on the novel The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. The film stars Ice Cube, Eva Longoria, Clark Gregg, Andrea Savage, Henry Hunter Hall, Iman Benson, Devon Bostick, and Michael O'Neill. In the film, a high-level DHS officer and his family find themselves at the center of an alien invasion and a plot to sabotage the country.

For what it is worth, this film was released on Prime Video in July but I did not have the stomach to watch it because this film was torn to shreds by any credible person with brain cells. I did not even want to hate watch this film because I knew it would not turn out well. But knowing I had to do my lists, I forced myself to watch a film I am confident in saying is one of the worst films I have ever seen. Everything about this film was lazily done, from the performances to the script to the visual effects, and I am far worse for having seen this abomination.

I will only talk about two performances in this film because I cannot stand to talk about any other ones. The first one I want to talk about has to do with Ice Cube. The former NWA rapper also known as O'Shea Jackson has also cut his teeth as an actor, mainly being known for his roles in 21 Jump Street (2012) and its sequel 22 Jump Street (2014). When he took on the role of Will Radford in this film, I thought that this was one of the most phoned-in and lazy performances I have seen all year. In the three locations that Ice Cube's character goes to, he acts like he does not care at all. I get the vibe that he is bored, he is sick, or maybe both. If he is bored and does not care, why should I, my dude?

The second, and final, performance I will be able to stomach talking about today has to do with my boy Clark Gregg. Gregg has been around for a while in the industry, but he really began gaining notoriety when he became Phil Coulson in the MCU. Beginning with Iron Man (2008) and ending in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013-20), this is where he really turned heads. Gregg is barely in this film and he seems just as bored and lazy as Ice Cube (or any other performer) as Donald Briggs. He is definitely my second-least favorite Donald in the entertainment industry, and the boring and lazy effort is not enough for me to not criticize one of my favorite guys in the business.

Okay, only two more paragraphs I want to make before I get to doing something more productive with my time. The second-to-last thing I want to criticize to kingdom come has to be the writing of the film. I mentioned in my informational paragraph that the writers for this film were Kenneth A. Golde and Marc Hyman. What an absolutely fucking terrible script they gave us. I was bored fifteen minutes into this film, and a lot of that has to do with the story that begins by making literally no goddamn sense. Nothing from the aliens feeding on data to the family drama felt like it was made with very much effort, and especially very much care.

And finally, before I move on to more productive things, I have to talk about the absolute dogshit visual effects of this film. We are now in 2026, and there is a standard for visual effects when it comes to films. Nothing should look like Superman (2025) did, and nobody expected this film's effects to look like that film's, but I did not expect the effects to literally look like they were done by a bunch of high-schoolers who just discovered visual effects technology for the first time. The visual effects were lazy and absolutely disgraceful. What makes this worse is two fold: this film was not only made during the COVID-19 pandemic, but there were two years of post production. TWO FUCKING YEARS, and the aliens look like THAT? What a disgrace.

In conclusion, War of the Worlds is one of the laziest and most careless cinematic offerings I have ever seen, and you should not even hate-watch this piece of garbage. Thank you all for reading, and I will see you for the next post.