‘War of the Worlds’ Review: Ice Cube’s Adaptation Tries Too Hard to be Different
Will we ever get a faithful adaptation of ‘War of the Worlds’? I doubt it. Certainly the latest attempt which was released on Prime Video does nothing to change that.
Starring Ice Cube as a security analyst working for the Department of Homeland Security, who gets trapped in the office while the world comes under attack from mysterious alien invaders.
This setup uses the premise of setting the entire movie on one computer screen, using things like Whatsapp, Zoom, and Facebook Live to keep all the characters in touch and show what’s happening around the world as the alien tripods attack vital infrastructure.
It’s a cool (though not original) premise, and I think that somewhere underneath it all there could have been a good film. Obviously social media and the kind of constant communication we have now would be a big part of an event like this, as we see with wars and natural disasters in the real world. The problem is that here it’s only used as a gimmick to mark this movie out as something different and try to rescue a dreadful script.
The idea is more interesting than the execution, which is just ridiculous. There are several plot points that just spring out of nowhere, and it’s stuffed with every cliche you can imagine. There are twists here; twists that are either so obvious you can see them coming a mile off, or so ridiculous they just make you laugh.
On top of that, the conceit quickly starts to fall apart as all the characters keep in constant video contact all the time, no matter how desperate the situation. It all gets a bit much after a while, watching Ice Cube conveniently work his way out of every situation in a few seconds using deus ex Microsoft, and there’s so much random stuff being thrown at the screen all the time, with new characters, locations, plot points and developments, that it leads to a “sure, why not” reaction. Nothing really makes sense or pays off smoothly; it’s all just there waiting for the characters to pick up.
There’s also something a bit off-putting about the use of real-world footage to depict warzones and destruction, with alien tripods CGI’d in. It’s something that other movies have done before, but this feels like too weak and flimsy a place to use it, as opposed to, say, a film that’s based on real events.
It’s also incredible how much footage is transmitted directly from news organisations that really shouldn’t be allowed to film, considering that the aliens are known to be hacking into data centers, meaning they will have access to all this info, and therefore know where and when to expect responses from the military.
I wonder why no one can seem to do a good, faithful adaptation of H.G. Wells’ classic novel? It seems like such a simple choice to set it in the time period of late-Victorian England, and follow the story to a large extent, which already separates it from most alien invasion movies.
As it is, this film only has a tertiary connection to Wells’s work, and really owes more to Amazon, with the amount of heavy product placement here. It really wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Jeff Bezos’s company is responsible for saving the day.
I could complain that the resolution comes out of nowhere and wraps everything up too easily, but at least it means we don’t have to spend any more time watching this awful film.
This is just another low-quality alien invasion movie, using a poor gimmick to make it stand out (and also to keep the cost down), desperate to seem like it’s something original and exciting. I can’t even say it’s dumb fun, as it takes itself very seriously. It’s not surprising it ended up on Prime Video, which is where it belongs, soon to be forgotten as one more bad adaptation of ‘War of the Worlds’.
