“It’s worse than you think.” Those are the words that appear in the trailer for War of the Worlds, a feature-length Amazon Prime commercial disguised as a movie about data-eating aliens. The modernized retelling of H.G. Wells’ 1898 sci-fi novel stars Ice Cube (Friday) as a desk-bound Department of Homeland Security officer who must save the world — from behind his computer screen — after a government surveillance program, “Goliath,” activates meteor-born aliens on Earth.
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Prime Video’s War of the Worlds is just the second movie this year to receive the rare zero percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes (behind the Sylvester Stallone-starring Alarum) based on a handful of critic reviews.
Variety critic Peter Debruge, describing the “disastrous” disaster movie as “a feature-length commercial for all things Amazon,” writes, “How many people will watch this nonsense long enough to get to the part where the Prime delivery guy saves the day, telling Will, ‘I need you to place an official order on Amazon to activate the drone’?”
The screenlife version of War of the Worlds “begins to explore the delicate nature of data protection as the aliens change the focus of their attack, which represents the writing’s commentary on the state of privacy in America,” writes Brian Orndorf in a review for Blu-ray.com. “However, there’s nothing profound to be found here, and the endeavor’s handle on viable news sources and social media tools is a little curious as Facebook, Fox News, and Joe Rogan are prominently featured, and conspiracy theories are toyed with —suggesting that the picture was probably intended for a specific viewer demographic at one point in its production journey.”
The movie “just sucks,” YouTube critic Jeremy Jahns succinctly said in his review. That’s also the consensus from users on Metacritic, where a 1.8 score indicates “overwhelming dislike.” War of the Worlds has a weighted rating of 3.3 out of 10 from more than 6,000 user votes cast on IMDb, with fan reviews not faring much better on Rotten Tomatoes: the low-budget sci-fi has just 11 percent on the Popcornmeter with an average rating of 1.2 out of 5 stars.
“There’s bad. There’s very bad. And then there is the most recent War of the Worlds,” reads a half-star review from Daja Y. “The invasion itself is completely secondary to Ice Cube’s character and his video screen. The invasion is barely a backdrop; viewed never more than momentarily. The movie itself is all but completely unwatchable on every level in every way. A total waste of time!”
“This movie was so bad. I think we are being punked,” reads a review from Jasmyn M. Nic G agrees, “Worst film this century.” An assortment of reviews slammed War of the Worlds as “hilariously bad,” “the worst movie of all time,” “absolutely abysmal,” and “a glorified Amazon ad.” “I’m happy Orson Welles never has to know this happened to his beloved masterpiece,” another user writes of the panic-inducing 1938 radio drama.
War of the Worlds — starring Ice Cube, Eva Longoria, Clark Gregg, Iman Benson, Henry Hunter Hall, Devon Bostick, Michael O’Neill, and Andrea Savage — is now streaming on Prime Video.
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image courtesy of 20th Century Studios -
Image courtesy of Lucasfilm
