It Looks Like Amazon’s War of the Worlds Will Be 2025’s Worst Movie

Originally published in 1898, H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds is one of the most classic works in science fiction, chronicling mankind’s futile battle against technologically advanced invaders from Mars. Wells’ novel has since been adapted many times over, most famously by Byron Haskin in 1953 and Steven Spielberg in 2005.

Earlier this summer, Amazon released a new adaptation of War of the Worlds by first-time director Rich Lee that stars Ice Cube as a DHS officer who, thanks to an advanced surveillance program, becomes aware of an alien invasion and government coverup. Unfortunately, Lee’s take on Wells’ sci-fi classic might become famous for a less laudatory reason: being the worst movie of 2025.

For example, Wired’s Alana Yzola decries the movie as “shameless tech propaganda.” She writes:

From Anonymous-style livestreams featuring the US constitution to Radford digitally stalking his children to the secret data-stealing project that beacons the aliens to Earth, the true enemy is clear: the US government and its technology. In fact, the only time privacy is threatened as it relates to private businesses is when the government interferes with it… Most importantly, the secret government program Goliath, which is the ultimate reason why the alien cyborgs invaded, siphons billions of dollars’ worth of private data conversations from the American people. There is zero mention of tech juggernauts like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk being linked to controversial data collection processes, from failing to protect personal data to staging a full-blown digital coup in the US government. Hardly surprising, considering it’s an Amazon movie, but it still feels like a glaring omission.

Similarly, Peter Debruge calls the movie “disastrous” and criticizes the nonstop product placement.

The project might be scarier if the company that’s releasing it, Amazon, hadn’t already achieved world domination. Even with a Prime subscription, you have to sit through two minutes of ads to watch 90 more of what amounts to a feature-length commercial for all things Amazon.

Brian Tallerico admits that the movie takes an interesting approach — its story is primarily told via video chats and surveillance footage — but does absolutely nothing with it.

Is it really that bad? It sure is, not only ineptly made in every category that a critic could consider but also truly morally icky, constantly promoting Amazon while telling a story of world powers uniting against what is basically an interstellar data breach. Worst of all, it’s only rarely even “stupid fun,” which was the hope of this critic who has seen every Sharknado movie and chuckles at memories of Mansquito. Give me a silly movie that knows it’s dumb on a hot summer day every year. This isn’t that. It’s so much dumber than it thinks it is.

CT Jones is particularly scathing in their review.

This War of the Worlds isn’t bad or even so-bad-it’s-good. It’s a secret third thing, a hodgepodge of shoddy CGI and dead-eyed reaction shots from Ice Cube that make you feel like you can identify individual brain cells mid-death cycle. Since its quiet release on Amazon Prime’s streaming service on July 30, War of the Worlds has steadily built a word-of-mouth reputation for its sheer ridiculousness… But don’t let the noise fool you. This corporation-coddling remake is so unparseable you’ll actively wish it were worse — or just over.

Finally, The Verge’s Kevin Nguyen highlights all of the film’s various ineptitudes, from the gross privacy violations and awful dialog to the bizarre plot holes.

There are rumors that it was filmed during the COVID-19 pandemic and shelved because it was so bad. If Steven Spielberg’s 2005 War of the Worlds was a high-budget spectacle, this reboot of the same IP two decades later couldn’t be more opposite: cheap, tacky, and lazy. That said, if you’re a certain kind of viewer — the sort that delights in something that is consistently and unintentionally very funny — it might be worth streaming.

Longtime Opus readers know that I have a pretty high tolerance for bad movies, which explains my fascination with Godfrey Ho. And to be perfectly honest, I have been tempted to watch Amazon’s War of the Worlds. After all, just how bad could it be? And maybe I still will, when it’s late at night, I’m bored, and I don’t feel like another Z-grade ninja movie.

However, there are so many good and interesting bad movies out there — something that’s plainly obvious from even just a cursory look at Tubi’s library — that I feel less inclined to watch a bad movie that’s essentially a 90-minute commercial for a multi-trillion-dollar company.