******SPOILERS******

Since the 1898 publishing of H.G. Wells’ classic alien invasion novel “The War of the Worlds,” there have been multiple adaptations. Notable versions being the Orson Welles’ 1938 Mercury Theatre radio play (which terrified an off-guard United States), the iconic 1953 Cold War-era movie, Jeff Wayne’s 1978 musical, a syndicated TV series (1987-1988), a 2005 Steven Spielberg movie featuring Tom Cruise (which allegorized post 9/11 panic), and most recently a 2019 Victorian-era BBC miniseries as well. Each version generally spoke to the era in which it was made, with the radio play and movie versions being the most evident examples.

With that in mind, Russian-Kazakh producer Timur Bekmambetov (“Night Watch”), writers Kenneth A. Golde (“The Job”), Marc Hyman (“Meet the Fockers”) and music video director Rich Lee had the not-terrible idea in 2020 of adapting “War of the Worlds” for the internet age. No prior version had done this before, since the internet was still in its relative infancy back when Spielberg made his 2005 film. A screenlife version made during the COVID lockdown probably sounded like a perfectly good idea. In fact, it might’ve made a nice metaphor for a world in the grip of overcoming a deadly ‘invader’ (Martians-for-COVID) from our laptops.

What ultimately came of that idea was a movie that only recently wrapped a two-year postproduction period sometime in 2024, and was dropped on Amazon’s Prime Video this year. Ice Cube (“Boyz in the Hood,” “Friday”), Eva Longoria (“Desperate Housewives”) and Clark Gregg (“Iron Man”) star in the resulting fiasco, which has been reported as costing anywhere from under $10 million to $60 million, depending on the source. And very little of that money is up on the screen, or rather, screens.

In fact, this Amazon-Universal collaboration is possibly one of the worst things I’ve seen this century to date. Calling it a ‘movie’ seems like undue praise.

“War of the Worlds” (2025)

Having as much in common with Wells’ novel as “Beavis and Butthead” does with Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men,” the story is told from the perspective of Department of Homeland Security desk-bound spy Will Radford (Ice Cube); a middle-aged dad and widower who illegally uses his vast government resources (drones, web/security-cams, etc) to spy on his pregnant daughter Faith (Iman Benson), a bio-researcher, and her ‘baby daddy’ Mark (Devon Bostick), a seemingly unambitious Amazon driver. Will also has a son named Dave (Henry Hunter Hall), a professional gamer.

Note: My first and biggest problem with the story is its central character’s absolute lack of ethics. We see our ‘hero’ Will creepily and disturbingly spying on his family using government resources (a federal crime in itself). Nothing he does from this point on could make him a ‘hero’ for me, not to mention that the otherwise talented Ice Cube (“Boyz in the Hood”) is wasted as he sits and mugs to a webcam for nearly the entire runtime.

During the course of creepily spying on his kids, Will’s NASA contact, Dr. Sandra Salas (Eva Longoria) alerts him to unusual storm activity happening all over the world at once, with freak lightning storms and a flurry of falling meteors, which destroy multiple buildings. Will is also on a personal mission to stop the online hacker ring “Disruptor,” which his teams of field agents aren’t able to outwit. Will’s boss, director Briggs (Clark Gregg) also has secret plans to activate a gargantuan, “Colossus”-style data center (right out of Wells’ novel, of course) for collecting information on every single American at all times–something Will is already doing with his own kids (and he’s our hero, folks…).

The meteorites yield massive alien tripods (they’re no longer called Martians) that topple buildings, zap military resistance, and trash the world’s cities, but only as a diversion for their real goal of draining information from the world’s data centers, because these aliens are cybernetic insects that feed on data. Literal data miners. Yes, it’s every bit as stupid as it sounds.

Note: It makes absolutely zero sense for cybernetic, bug-like aliens to subsist on human manufactured data, which would be utterly useless to aliens. Even if they could correlate the meanings behind our endless streams of ones and zeros, would they even understand human languages? Needless to say, this collection of webcam-melodramatics has the scientific acumen of your average episode of “Baywatch Nights,” so don’t hold your breath for any of it to make sense.

Over the course of 90 tortuous minutes, we see Amazon driver Mark rise to hero status, as he and his injured baby mama Faith use an Amazon^TM drone to carry a super malware hurriedly and illogically concocted by Will, his biochemist daughter (?), and his hacker son; whom he learns is the secret head of Disruptor. The Amazon drone carries the virus on a USB drive that must be hand-delivered to a government server room to spread through the alien network.

Note: Amazon product placement is so thick in this movie it should be labeled a choking hazard.

This finally compels Will to stop wasting federal tax dollars spying on his family and get out of his f**king chair for the last ten minutes of the movie, as he’s forced to snatch the drive from the drone and plug it into the system manually. Naturally, the virus spreads in record time across the globe, and the alien cyborg bugs are rendered harmless. Their inert war machines collapse as well. We’re led to believe Will died in his final act of heroism, because of an ‘I did my best’ email he drafted for his kids in the event of his death. However, the ending sees Will alive and quitting his top-secret government job to ‘fight the power’ with his son.

Note: We’re supposed to believe that the US intelligence community would simply let Will resign (with all the government secrets in his graying head) to join a global hacker network (??), Frankly, I found Will’s resignation scene harder to accept than cybernetic alien invaders. In our universe, Will would have a remaining life expectancy of 20 minutes.

The End.

Summing It Up.

There is a good idea somewhere in this terribly undercooked mess. A “War of the Worlds” for the internet age has genuine potential, it’s just a shame that the money and talent wasted on this version failed to find it. Mixing some recognizable actors with visual FX that oscillate between early-CGI and competent fan film, this Amazon/Universal coproduction could’ve been a decent, ten-minute, fan-made YouTube video, and for a hell of a lot less than however many millions it cost.

Centered around a genuinely unlikable lead character not aided with a mediocre performance from Ice Cube (“Bye, Felicia”), the movie seemingly aims to be a low-rent remake of “Independence Day,” but with none of that big, silly movie’s scope or heart. Instead, we get a morally dead-eyed movie whose ‘message’ seems less a Wellsian allegory of colonialism and more about current American consumerism. In this iteration, we’re now told that a combination of unconstitutional, illegal government surveillance and greedy mega corporations like Amazon^TM will haphazardly band together to save the world someday. The only thing missing from this steaming pile of crap is a Donald J. Trump producer credit.

If you’re like me, and enjoy listening to the Orson Welles’ 1938 radio adaptation of “War of the Worlds” every year around Halloween? I’d urge you to enjoy that version over a nice warm cup of pumpkin spiced mocha before you consider wasting 90 unrecoverable minutes of your life on this dismal Amazon Prime ad disguised as a subpar screenlife movie.

Happy (early) Halloween, folks.

Where to Watch.

“War of the Worlds” 2025 is available to stream exclusively on Amazon’s Prime Video.