The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells is one of the finest, most creative and influential pieces of sci-fi writing… ever. It changed the landscape forever and became the blueprint on which any alien invasion story was based. First published way back in 1898, the story has gone on to be adapted multiple times across various forms of media, and the novel has never been out of print for almost 130 years. That’s massively impressive. I’m a huge fan of the original story, so whenever a new adoption is released, I have to check it out…

There are two major warning signs of just how fucking awful this new adaption of the classic story is. The first is that comments have been disabled for the official trailer above on YouTube. The second warning comes from the film’s tagline: “It’s worse than you think”. The film is telling the audience how bad it is and yes, it really is worse than you think. With a moderate runtime of 91 minutes, I could only make it through this film over the course of three days and by splitting it into three separate, smaller “watchable” pieces. The urge to turn this off was as frequent as it was strong. I would’ve happily walked out, but I was streaming it at home. If anyone did make it through this in one sitting, then you are a far greater person than I. However, I did eventually force myself through the whole runtime to do this review.

Now, I have seen and give up on some pretty awful adaptions of The War of the Worlds over the years. The BBC had a decent go in 2019 when they did a mini-series. They got it right in that the series was set in the Edwardian period, not far off the original story’s early 20th century setting. No screen adaption has ever really got the original setting right, but this BBC version was close. However, they committed the cardinal sin of making The War of the Worlds boring. The BBC series was dull, slow and painfully drawn out and one of the worst things that you can ever do to The War of the Worlds is make it dull. It’s a story about Martians coming to Earth to take over the planet. It’s massive in scale, even when told intimately. There’s so much to draw from and adapt that even though the original story is coming up to 130 years old, you can still update and modernise it and create something unique. Just don’t make it boring.

I didn’t think it was possible to make a more uninteresting take on the tale than the BBC mini-series, but I am man enough to admit when I am wrong. This new version is woefully bad. They’ve taken all of that scale and scope of a Martian attack and turned it into a bloke sitting in front of his laptop and talking to people via Zoom. Do you remember when Covid was at it’s height, the world shutdown, we weren’t allowed out of the house and all that? Well, some people got creative and still produced TV shows and movies from home using the Internet and laptops. Michael Sheen and David Tennant made a fantastic show called Staged where they played fictionalised versions of themselves trying to rehearse for a production, during Covid lockdown. Someone sitting in front of a laptop can be done well with some deft writing. It can also be done really badly as War of the Worlds proves. It really does feel like it was made during Covid five years ago… because it was. Yep, this film has taken this long to be released… and I can see why.

Anyway, Ice Cube plays Will Radford, a technical wizard and surveillance expert/domestic terror analyst who works for the Department of Homeland Security, hence why he is stuck in front of his laptop. You can tell that he is super smart because of the Hollywood way of putting glasses on an actor to show that they are playing a highly intelligent character trope. Will has the ability to observe every human on the planet due to how we are constantly using the Internet and sharing our data in this modern world. Then there’s Eva Longoria as Dr Sandra Salas who works for NASA. You can tell that he is super smart because of the Hollywood way of putting glasses on an actor to show that they are playing a highly intelligent character trope. Sandra is concerned about some mass global weather storms. Meanwhile, working with the FBI, Will is trying to track down a hacker called Disruptor. Just then, meteors come crashing to Earth and the famous War of the Worlds invasion begins.

Now, I have to be honest and say that updating the story for the modern age is a nice idea. As much as I’d love to see a much closer adoption of the source material, I am open to updates. I quite liked the Steven Spielberg version from 20 years ago that latched on to that post 9/11 vibe. I really liked 1996’s Independence Day which, let’s be honest, is War of the Worlds under a different name. They even take out the aliens via a (computer) virus at the end. There’s nothing wrong with a new take on the tale. But, as I said before, War of the Worlds is an epic story and it needs that scale to be told. You can’t do it justice by having the lead character stuck in front of a laptop. It can remain intimate, H.G. Wells’ original novel is intimate as it is told in first-person from the point of view of an unnamed narrator, yet it is still epic in it’s storytelling.

When you set the film as being seen by a bloke watching a monitor for 90% of the runtime, you remove a massive chunk of what made the story work. Your narrator, your lead character has to be in the thick of the action, they have to be there with the fighting-machines and see the destruction and experience the fear first-hand. A fella sitting at his laptop is not going to capture what War of the Worlds is about. Will seems to have access to anything everywhere and can spy on anyone at any given time with 100% free access to everyone’s information (including his own kids. He even has an accessible camera in his daughter’s fridge… because?), and all just by clicking a few icons on his laptop. I have to admit to finding elements of this film “interesting”. The whole idea of surveillance by “big brother” and our private data being used without our knowledge is a topic worth exploring… but not a topic that should be in War of the Worlds. This is like two completely separate films with two different plots have been forced together, and it does not work.

You do get to see some alien invasion action, but (as mentioned) having the main character removed from it and just watching it on his computer via live feeds is wrong. There are things in this film that make no sense and plot points are raised, then quicky forgotten, while in-universe logic is thrown out of the window in mere moments. For instance, there’s a scene with one of the fighting-machines first attacks and one of them nails a military helicopter in the air with its heat ray. The copter is doing nothing but observing, so no reason for the aliens to take it out, but they do anyway. It sets the tone for how callous and destructive they are. Then, a few minutes later and following some awful “tension building”, Will’s daughter is escaping from that very same fighting-machine and it actively comes to seek her out, but she escapes in a Tesla car (controlled by Will because he has access to absolutely everything everywhere with just a couple of mouse clicks) and the machine is helpless against the car as it casually drives off. The machine doesn’t use its heat ray, does nothing to try to stop the car. So, are these things massive machines that can wipe out humanity or not? I guess that the daughter is protected by secondary character plot armour.

As a friend of mine pointed out, there is a bit in the film where it is explicitly stated that the aliens have shut down all military hardware globally. All we humans have to fight back with are foot soldiers. Helicopters and planes fall out of the sky, ships crash on beaches, every piece of military hardware globally is unusable. “The world’s military has been completely crippled”, a line directly taken from this very bit. But later… Will has access to a fully armed and ready to go military drone. I know that you have to suspend disbelief when dealing with films like this and all that, but films like this still need to stick to the plot elements that they have established. Before I forget, have you noticed that most of the pictures in this review are close-ups of Ice Cube looking confused? Because that’s what most of the film is, Ice Cube staring at his computer screen (and usually us the audience) with the same expression on his face.

At the heart of all the alien destruction is a really corny “father is not able to understand, or let go of, or listen to his grown children”. Will is widowed, can’t let go of the past and all that crap. Then there’s the massively intrusive Amazon product placement. The film is an Amazon Prime Video exclusive, funded by Amazon and it really let’s you know as much too. There’s an early scene where we are introduced to Will’s son-in-law (I think) and he just so happens to work for Amazon and there’s a massive Amazon logo behind him, as he stands there wearing his Amazon unform and waving an Amazon package around. The film cuts back to him several times and yep, that Amazon logo is on full display. At one point, he uses one of those Amazon packing tape things to dispense tape to use as a tourniquet for a wound. Amazon tape, not only can it keep your packages safe, it can stem life threatening bleeding and save lives. What next, Amazon saves Earth from the alien invasion…

The ending, which I’m not going to directly spoil, is literally Amazon saves the world. I do have to give this version of War of the Worlds credit for doing something different than the old virus kills the aliens. Well, it still does do that… but now with added Amazon products (like an Amazon gift card, an Amazon gift card saves Earth from aliens). I don’t know why they didn’t just call this film Amazon Presents An Amazon Production Of H.G. Amazon Wells’ Amazon War Of  The Amazon Worlds Amazon Amazon Amazon Sponsored By Amazon By The Way Shop Using Amazon And Don’t Forget To Buy Amazon Gift Cards To Be Used On Amazon. This film is a fucking abomination and it’s a damn good job that H.G Wells died in 1946, because this would’ve killed him. The story is atrocious, the effects and CGI work is amateurish (I think AI was used because there’s some very bizarre animation. I suspect AI wrote the script too) and the acting is more wooden than a lying Pinocchio with an erection. There have been some awful War of the Worlds adaptions, but this one is in its own league. It is fucking terrible. Even the tagline does not spell out just how terrible this is.

You know, I think that this could’ve worked if it had been released while Covid was still very much part of the zeitgeist. If they had not done all the really stupid Amazon product placement and tied Covid to the plot. I don’t know, maybe the aliens attacking us at that time because the world had been weakened by Covid. If this had been released five years ago… it might have worked better, Releasing a Covid-made film half a decade after the fact, it has missed the boat. I’m not saying it would have been a great film, but it would’ve made more sense, at least. I’m quite a cynical thinking person and I have a sneaking suspicion that this has taken so long to be released because Amazon knew that it is awful. They’ve sat on it for years with no idea what to do with it. They knew that it would get lambasted (and it has) if it was ever released. But I also think that someone at Amazon is Internet savvy, they knew that releasing a fucking terrible film like this will get the Internet talking and with people reviewing this badly, it would become a “thing”. This would get people watching War of the Worlds to see just how bad it is for themselves. It did get to number 1 around the world on Amazon Prime for a reason. Amazon don’t care how bad this film is, all they care about is that people are watching it, and they are.

It really is far worse than  you think. I came up with a modern twist on The War of the Worlds a few years back. I keep meaning to write it (public domain, anyone can do an adaption of the original) but I’ve never gotten round to it. The idea has gestated and grown since I first came up with it. I really need to get it written down sometime. I can tell you now, even though all I have written is a rough synopsis, it’s already far superior to this film in every conceivable way.

Well, now that I have gotten this review out of the way, I can pretend that this film never existed… until October. You see, I’m doing a The War of the Worlds Halloween special that explores the influence of the original story. I’ll also be looking at the various adaptions and much more. Yep, I’ll have much more War of the Worlds coming later this year.