Amazon's War of the Worlds update should never have been released

Telegraph

2 days ago

Since the publication of HG Wells's The War of the Worlds in 1898, the story of slug-like Martians invading Earth in clanking tripods has been retold in many shapes and forms. There was Orson Welles's notoriously realistic radio version, plus television shows, movies, video games and Jeff Wayne's prog-rock opera, with its feverish synth solos and mind-bending mullets.
But no previous adaptation has extracted every trace of excitement from Wells's science fiction staple so thoroughly as music video director Rich Lee's appalling new War of the Worlds, which relays the action via the dull medium of Zoom cameras, phone streams and Google Maps read-outs.
It is silly, shoddy and features far too much of rapper-turned-leading man Ice Cube staring at a computer screen while looking as if he's working through a reasonably urgent digestive ailment. Like a heat-ray in reverse, it leeches all the fun out of what should be an epic tale of alien invasion.
As with the Martians in their mysterious cylinders, it has taken its time burrowing to the surface. This War of the Worlds was filmed during the pandemic, when studios were desperate to greenlight new projects. Hence, Cube's surveillance expert, Will, and a cast that also includes Eva Longoria as a hotshot Nasa scientist and Clark Gregg (The West Wing) as the director of Homeland Security, all filming their scenes alone, as Covid regulations intended.
In addition to making Covid compliance more straightforward – and keeping the budget down – producers Timur Bekmambetov and Patrick Aiello wanted to follow the example set by Orson Welles by telling the story through the prism of modern technology. In 1938, it was radio. Today, it is social media live-streams and surveillance cameras, which is how Will watches the invasion unfold.
'It'll be exciting for audiences to watch the movie and ask themselves: if aliens invaded today, how would we experience it? Most likely, we'd be watching it on phones,' said Bekmambetov, who has previously produced social media found-footage films such as 2015's Unfriended. 'In that way, it's kind of a modern spin on Orson Welles's War of the Worlds. Back then, he used radio, the most popular technology of the time, to make people believe the invasion was real. Today, that medium is the screen of our devices.'
It's a promising idea that War of the Worlds fails to do any justice to. Which is presumably why Universal Pictures let it rot on a shelf for four years before passing it off to Amazon Prime Video – rapidly becoming home to streaming's biggest collection of B-movies (its servers are stuffed with dross such as Slime City and Abraxas: Guardian of the Universe).
In delaying the release, Universal and Prime have had the bad luck to have their movie coincide with the 20th anniversary of Steven Spielberg's superlative War of the Worlds. Though eclipsed at the time by star Tom Cruise's increasing eccentricity (this was circa his bouncing on Oprah's couch nadir), watched today, Spielberg's tilt at Wells is everything the sorry Ice Cube version is not.
Spielberg's film is tense, spectacular and, in places, genuinely terrifying. For instance, the scene where the first Martian tripod emerges from beneath a street and starts zapping passersby explores America's post 9/11 traumas through the medium of alien invasion to stunning effect.
By contrast, the only thing stunning about Cube's War of the Worlds is the fact that it has seen daylight. Unlike the seismic CGI of the Spielberg version, here the Martians and their tripods look like they were churned out on a shoestring (and possibly a Sinclair ZX81).
Cube, for his part, is out of his depth as the moral heart of the film. Before the Martians arrive, he spends most of his time keeping tabs on his pregnant daughter (Iman Benson) and underachieving son (Henry Hunter Hall). He doesn't have the charisma to carry off the part of a dad who spies because he cares too much. Then, after the extra terrestrials gatecrash, he is reduced to shouting things like, 'Take your intergalactic asses back home!' all the time.
There is an attempt at social commentary, with the Martians seeking not Earth's resources but humanity's data – handily stored on a central server in the middle of Washington, DC. This leads to an accidentally hilarious denouement in which Cube tries to beat a tripod to the access point, waving a memory stick over his head and huffing for all he is worth. (As if to hammer home how desperate this film is, at one point a character utters the words: 'I need you to place an official order on Amazon to activate the drone.')
It's one of the most tragic things Prime has put on screen – and I say that as someone who had to watch its Mr Beast game show. Any aliens considering invading our planet will take one look at the new War of the Worlds and change their plans. Why bother making the trip when all humanity has to offer is five-star brain-rot with atrocious special effects?