Amazon’s War of the Worlds: so bad it’s good advertising

Hello readers! I’m a bit late to the party on this one, so I suspect that many of you are already familiar with this cinematic travesty… But, for those of you who dwell outside the YouTube and Letterboxd bubbles, it is with deep regret that I must inform you about Amazon’s recent film adaptation of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds.

The film took the internet by storm for all the wrong reasons. It was distributed by Universal Pictures onto Amazon Prime Video on the 30th July, with virtually no advertising – as if the distributors wanted to hide its existence. However, early reviews were so bad that people (particularly YouTubers) started taking notice. This film had 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. Zero! And so began the snowball effect. Was this the worst film ever made? People had to watch it to find out. They then wrote their own 0% reviews, told their friends, and drew in another wave of curious viewers.

My friends and I were not immune to the intrigue. We have a long history of watching questionable films together, and we have greatly enjoyed a number of cult classics – even ones that are riddled with flaws (e.g., Dune (1984) or Van Helsing). We wanted to know if War of the Worlds was irredeemably bad, ready to be added to the “hall of shame”, or whether it crossed the mythical “so bad it’s good” threshold.

Our conclusion? It’s terrible. But as a group of friends, we had a lot of fun laughing at it.

However, as I have mulled this cinematic atrocity in the days since, I have come to believe that it has a more insidious side. We might have laughed at the time, thinking that the film was too ham-fisted to be harmful – but had we all been deceived? Had we, and the rest of the internet, fallen for a genius-level marketing campaign? Let me explain.

First, some context for the blissfully unaware…

Amazon’s War of the Worlds stars Ice Cube, best known for his pioneering rap music, although he has also enjoyed a successful acting career since the 1990s. Here, he plays a character called Will Radford, who has an inscrutable job at the US Department of Homeland Security. Most of his workday seems to involve sitting in front of a screen, watching various channels of surveillance footage from around the world.

Unlike the original story, which was set at the end of the nineteenth century, the adaptation is based firmly in the present day. Technology and computers are integral to the plot and to the cinematography. Ice Cube has access to every camera, every phone, every car and every smart fridge that he desires – although his official role is unclear. Is he meant to intervene? Or just to observe? He spends most of his time abusing his surveillance powers to spy on his adult children, and he makes no effort to hide this intrusive behaviour. In fact, he frequently calls them to critique their life choices, such as demanding why they don’t have enough healthy food in their smart fridge.

About ten minutes in, anyone who started watching this film in blissful ignorance of its key premise might be starting to panic. All we have seen so far is Ice Cube sitting in front of his computer screen, watching news footage, answering calls on Microsoft Teams, and spying on his children through a deep-state surveillance network. He has not moved in all this time, except to lean back from his desk by a few centimetres, or fold his forehead into a slight frown. Is this a snappy introductory sequence, you might wonder? Is this just a novel way of showing desk-based work, and will Ice Cube eventually go home to his loving wife?

The answer is no – absolutely not. This Teams-based storytelling isn’t just the opening sequence: this is how the entire film is staged. And Ice Cube won’t be returning home to his loving wife, because she’s dead. This is revealed to us, incidentally, by Ice Cube navigating to an “In Memoriam” Facebook page, then listening to the last voice note his wife ever sent him over Facebook Messenger, in which she reminds him to take out the bins.

The plot, from here, follows the beats you might expect. Aliens arrive. Chaos ensues. But all of this is shown to us through video footage on Ice Cube’s computer screen, accompanied by shots of him frowning, scowling, and glowering – and, occasionally, taking off his glasses (that’s when you know that something really bad has happened).

A brief rundown of the plot…

Amazon describes this film as a “thrilling out-of-this-world adventure” that is “filled with present-day themes of technology, surveillance, and privacy.” They couldn’t be further from the mark on their first claim: Ice Cube remains within a single building for the entirety of the film, and none of the characters, at any point, go on an “out-of-this-world” adventure. As for the second claim, Amazon are closer to the money: the film is certainly filled with technology, surveillance and privacy, and these three things certainly exist in the present-day. What more would you want from your sci-fi? Speculation? Philosophy? Pfft.

When the aliens arrive, Ice Cube remains trapped in his room, watching the catastrophe unfold via smart toasters, doorbells and dashcams. We see multiple shots of people running away from alien tripods, filmed on their phones in a manner reminiscent of Sir Digby Chicken Ceasar. Most of the drama hinges around short-term escape plots, such as finding a suitable electric vehicle that Ice Cube can commandeer, or running down a specific series of streets following Ice Cube’s incomprehensible orders.

Although the film calls itself War of the Worlds, we don’t see much of the world at war; its scope is limited by the very small cast of characters, and any exposition is hindered by narrow shots in which the actors’ faces take up 80% of the screen. Much of the suspense is lost because we have seen this story so many times before, and seen it done much better. At no point do we feel afraid of the aliens, and every “narrow escape” for the main characters feels unlikely, unearned, and needlessly convoluted.

Still, the film wants us to believe that tensions are running high. Every few seconds we are gifted with an exclamation from Ice Cube, who provides such insights as “Goddamn!” and “Oh my God…” as well as winning understatement of the year with “This is bad.”

However, my friends have since decided that the best gif-ready Ice Cube quote is:

“It was YOU?!”

which is uttered with much arm-waving and chair-flipping in response to a “plot twist” that everyone saw coming. Whoever could have guessed that out of the five characters in this film, Ice Cube’s computer whizz son would turn out to be a hacker?

Source material? What source material?

Amazon’s adaptation makes the bold choice of deviating from H. G. Wells’ original story by changing the motivation of the aliens, changing the end of the story, and adding a “real villain”. The whimsy of the original tale, in which the Martians landed in and wiped out Woking, is unfortunately lost. Wells’ Martians fed on human blood, which they used to propagate their creeping red weed, ready to turn Earth into another red planet. There was nothing that any human could do to stop these incomprehensible foes, and the Earth was only spared when the aliens died from microbial infections that their Martian immune systems couldn’t handle. This plot hasn’t really aged – yet Amazon seem to have been desperate to upgrade it into something “present-day”.

In Amazon’s War of the Worlds, the aliens aren’t after blood: they are after data. And this feels, I think you’ll agree, a whole lot less scary. The aliens don’t want to kill anyone – they just want to drink bitcoin. And if it’s a choice between dying or offering our three-legged guests the contents of my work laptop, I’ll serve that ThinkPad up on a silver platter. I could do with some time off, honestly… And I can always make my spreadsheets again, after the aliens have depleted everyone’s Microsoft OneDrives and starved to death.

Another disappointment is that the aliens are physically vulnerable throughout the film. In the end, it is decided that every tripod can be brought down using a computer virus – which you could argue is an inventive reinterpretation of H. G. Wells’ original idea. However, the computer virus is written and administered to the aliens by Ice Cube and his hacker son. This makes them the saviours of humanity, and so the ending of the film lacks the humility and devastation of the original tale, which ended on a note of fear and uncertainty.

Finally, this film decided to include a human villain – which deeply undermines the alien threat. The Martians should be unknowable and all-powerful: a force of nature that cannot be bested or controlled. Instead, the film reveals that a certain branch of the US government knew about the aliens the whole time, and knew that they would come for the data, but let people accumulate the data anyway, despite the risk. I guess this might be some kind of clumsy allegory for climate change? Either way, it makes the alien invasion feel like a man-made disaster, which undermines their power and autonomy.

Also (and I have been holding this in while I bemoan the misrepresentation of our beloved Martians), what does this film mean by DATA?! Are we talking chips and wafers? Or just any human-made record of information, from stone tablets to papyrus scrolls? Why do the Martians want it? How can they sense it? What sort of nourishment do they gain from it?! At least blood made biological sense. But why do the Martians want information? Are they going to sell it to intergalactic third parties?!

Cardinal cinema sins

Given that War of the Worlds is designed to appear like an active, chaotic computer screen, it cannot be judged by the tried-and-tested laws of cinema. The characters are largely static, and the transfer of visual information is limited by the sizes of phone screens. It certainly isn’t easy to make a film in this way – and actually, it’s impressive that any semblance of a cohesive narrative arose from this mess.

However. We can still criticise basic sloppiness, such as the same shots of Ice Cube sipping coffee or removing his glasses being used multiple times, sometimes in the space of a few minutes. He removes his glasses many more times than he puts them back on.

The appearance of the aliens is also a massive disappointment. They do not inspire awe. They do not spark joy. From the front, they just look like giant bicycle helmets with legs. And they look human-made, rather than being “out-of-this-world”. There is no attempt to imagine a futuristic weapon, as H. G. Wells did when he invented the heat ray.

And then we have the human characters, who are laughably shallow. Their names are stored in Ice Cube’s Teams address book as “FBI Steve” or “Sandra NASA” – in case anyone in the audience wondered what jobs these people were meant to be doing.

Another critical weakness to this film is the heavy-handed exposition. Characters are constantly making panicked decisions, and in the absence of being able to see anything of their surroundings, situations are often spelled out to us in text alerts, with my favourite example being: “ALL HOSPITALS ARE FULL.” How does Ice Cube’s software know this? Is this an in-built notification for such a scenario? Every few minutes one of the characters will say something silly and go unchallenged, such as asserting that they are safe in a bunker forty feet below ground. Forty feet?! These are alien creatures with weapons beyond our human imaginings. You think forty feel of soil and concrete will stop them?

The premise had promise, BUT…

The “screenlife” genre has been growing in recent years, especially since the pandemic. Films of this variety are shown entirely via computer monitors and web cams, and there are many critically-acclaimed examples in the horror genre. Timur Bekmambetov, the producer of War of the Worlds, has made many successful screenlife films, including Unfriended (2015), Searching (2018) and Missing (2023). Together, these films have grossed more than $200 million globally. Bekmambetov’s most recent film, LifeHack, premiered earlier this year, and has received favourable reviews (it currently has 100% on Rotten Tomatoes). So, how did such a promising premise go so horribly wrong?

The product placement.

Possibly the biggest complaint about War of the Worlds, beyond the poor special effects, nauseating editing and questionable acting, is the rampant tide of product placement. Every character uses Airpods wherever they go. Most conversations happen on Microsoft Teams, and Ice Cube spends an inexplicable amount of time using Microsoft Office (he even copies and pastes photos into an Excel spreadsheet – what kind of sadist does this?!). YouTube is there, Facebook is there, even Tesla is there, with all their logos bold and obvious. Still, the cherry on top of the proverbial poop pile is the shameless Amazon propaganda.

One of the main characters is an Amazon driver, and he wears his uniform all the time. It stays pristine, too, so that the logo is always obvious. Towards the end of the film, it is decided that the only way to save the world is to hack the Martian tripods, and this requires the Amazon driver to send Ice Cube some code on a USB drive. Ice Cube drops everything he is doing, opens a new Edge browser tab, and goes through the entire process of searching for and buying an appropriate USB drive on Amazon. This must then be delivered to him BY AMAZON DRONE. And you better believe that while that drone is flying, it has the Amazon logo on the screen at all times. But it gets worse! When the drone crash lands the wrong way up, it is saved by bribing a nearby homeless man with a £1000 Amazon voucher. A voucher. For a homeless man. How is he to purchase anything on Amazon when he lacks a permanent abode?! The lack of consideration here is astounding.

If you’ve heard anything about this film, you’ve probably heard about the Amazon drone sequence. It really is one of the adverts of all time.

But was it… deliberately bad?

If I was to put my tin foil hat on for a moment, I would suggest that Amazon made this film deliberately awful in order to net themselves a larger audience. They knew this couldn’t be salvaged into anything good, but faced with a choice between mediocrity and outright cinematic blasphemy, they knew which would gain more momentum. Perhaps they made an executive decision to make the dialogue so bad that the memes wrote themselves?

I’m not sure how deep this conspiracy goes. But I certainly feel guilty talking about this film, because I’m only drawing more attention to it.

In fact, War of the Worlds isn’t really a film. It is an advert in disguise – and the whole internet has been duped into discussing it. Dozens of YouTubers have already called out Amazon’s sneaky tactics, but this doesn’t matter: every time we say the word “Amazon”, the company grows stronger. And a fairy dies somewhere. I don’t know.

This film has been wildly successful in terms of total views and view time, so I can only assume that Amazon will try something similar again. Maybe they could enlist the masters of mockbusters, The Asylum, and we’ll get many more cinematic disasterpieces.

The production history…

Since I started writing this review, I have become increasingly confused as to how this film was ever made. I have done a fair amount of digging, but there is very little information available, apart from articles in Deadline. But here goes.

Universal greenlit this film in late 2020, with Rich Lee as director, and Timur Bekmambetov as producer. At the time, they described it as being a “grounded sci-fi film in the vein of District 9” that would be about “themes of privacy versus surveillance”. Ice Cube and Eva Longoria (Sandra NASA) were both involved from the very start. The film was fast-tracked in response to Bekmambetov presenting Universal with “new technology” that would allow actors to film their parts remotely during pandemic restrictions. He signed a five-film contract with Universal, which I think is how his other screenlife horror films came about.

For director Rich Lee, this was his first feature film. He had built a career on making music videos and commercials, and his greatest hits include “Haven’t Met You Yet” for Michael Buble, “The Time” for the Black Eyed Peas, “Rap God” for Eminem and “Love” for Lana Del Rey. Quite a diverse client list… And he has made commercials for several well-known brands, including Fiat, Honda and Beats by Dre.

The script was written by Kenny Golde, who appears to have written many genres of films over the years. The other credited writer is Marc Hyman, who is renowned for taking failing scripts and repurposing them into something economically viable. He is known as a “script doctor” and is not always credited, although he has worked his magic on every genre imaginable.

Only in 2024, four years into the production process, was this film confirmed to be an adaptation of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. Filming lasted only 15 days. Post-production lasted 2 years. Then, somewhere along the way, another producer was brought in: a man named Patrick Aiello. He did all the publicity for this film, which amounted to a short interview with Deadline before release. None of the actors have talked about it before or since. Even Amazon declined to share the trailer on its official YouTube channel.

The best information I gathered about the production process came from a bizarre interview with producer Patrick Aiello and editor Charles Ancelle with the relatively small YouTube channel called Toni’s Film Club. I spent a long time wondering whether this review was fake, but I’m now almost certain that it’s genuine. Aiello claimed that the film was meant to get a theatrical release and was only acquired by Amazon recently. He claims that there was already an Amazon delivery driver in the story, and that this was why Amazon wanted the film. According to him, Amazon had no creative control over the content of the film. And apparently, the film only received such poor reviews because it was “misunderstood”.

This is all utterly baffling. The producer claims that War of the Worlds wasn’t one giant advert, and that all the Amazon logos were in there from the beginning. Do any of us believe him? And whatever happened to Bekmambetov, the producer who originally secured the funding? It seems to me that something suspicious happened during the production of this film, and nobody wants to admit it.

In summary…

Amazon’s War of the Worlds is a terrible film. As one of my friends put it about half an hour in: “I love War of the Worlds. What the f*** is this.” However, it may have crossed the “so bad it’s good” threshold, as we all had a great laugh watching it. If you like making fun of terrible films with your friends, or you like dissecting cinematic failures, I’m sure you’ll love it. Just be aware that you’re watching one of the most expensive, insidious adverts of all time.

Happy reading, and have a lovely week!