Have you ever watched a low-rated movie just for fun? Maybe a bad horror movie that made everyone laugh? Or an action movie that’s so ridiculous you just couldn’t reason with it?
Perhaps a comedy that just made you cringe inside? Or a movie so bad that you couldn’t bear watching it any longer – or just so horribly written that you end up criticizing every scene?
Well, War of the Worlds (Prime Video) might be one of those movies.
War of the Worlds (H.G. Wells, 1898) is a famous science fiction novel about planet Earth being invaded by aliens fleeing an uninhabitable Mars. The first film version was made in 1953. In 2005, a movie version was released. It received a 76% rating on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer, indicating it performed relatively well.
However, on July 30th, 2025, for some unknown reason, another adaptation of War of the Worlds was released, and it told a very different story from the first film.
When the movie begins, the audience can immediately see that the editing quality is somewhat unusual. It’s hard to tell what they did to give me motion sickness, but whatever they did, it makes the movie more dramatic and intense in scenes where it should be the exact opposite. For example, almost every time we see Ice Cube on his computer screen, the camera zooms in really close and glides across the screen every few seconds – it’s unnecessary and a little nauseating.
During the first half of the movie, we see the main character on his computer using security cameras to monitor random people on the streets and scan for potential threats to the government. Although he usually spies on his children (which is pretty weird), he’s also a bit strange considering he seems to be the only person with this job. He never does what he’s supposed to do for it, and instead continues to spy on his children and hack into their social media accounts. This makes him seem like he can do whatever he wants wherever he wants, like he’s playing God.
There’s also an unnecessary amount of promotions in the film. Every couple of minutes, you see big companies like Reddit, X, Facebook being used or Amazon’s new drone service having an entire action scene. Most promotions in movies are about how the character enjoys an item or shows its appliance, but this movie really makes it obvious.
Finally, the CGI of this movie was a trip. The robots appeared really fake and the animation quality was strange. In some scenes, the huge robots moved way too fast for their size, making it really easy to tell that there was a tight budget for the CGI. They also tried to cover the CGI up by doing the classic motion blur and camera shake so you can’t really see it, but it horribly failed. It just made the movie harder to watch, since every fun action scene was partially hidden.
Giving credit where credit is due: even though Ice Cube did not fit his role, he still made the movie fun to watch just by being himself and even though his acting isn’t very good, he still made the movie really funny and silly. The idea and concept of the movie were actually not that bad. If they had better screenwriters and put more money into the CGI, it would have been a lot better.
Though War of the Worlds seems like just another cash-grab, it’s still pretty entertaining to watch. There’s lots of tiny jokes about social media and conspiracy theories that make the movie fun to watch with the family.
If you’re looking for your next bad movie night, this film is perfect for you.
