Is 'War of the Worlds' the worst movie of 2025?

NBC News

20 hours ago

It's got an epic title, a big-name star as its lead and a major studio behind it.
But since it was released on Amazon's Prime Video on July 25, 'War of the Worlds" has become an all-time ratings bust.
The new adaptation of H.G. Wells' book was ranked as one of the worst films of all time by the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.
The film stars Ice Cube as Homeland Security surveillance and threat assessment expert Will Radford, who uses government technology to spy on, and later help, his children amid an unfolding alien invasion. Radford is at his desk the entirety of the film, watching events unfold in front of him on a computer screen.
Eva Longoria, Michael O'Neill, Olivia DeLaurentis and Clark Gregg also star in the movie, which was directed by Rich Lee.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the sci-fi movie has a paltry 3% rating on the "Tomatometer," which tracks critic reviews, and 21% on the "Popcornmeter," which tracks audience reviews.
Rotten Tomatoes' 'Worst Movies at All Time' list ranks 'War of the Worlds' 88th. The 2002 sci-fi thriller ' Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" is No. 1. The only other title from 2025 to make the list is Sylvester Stallone's 'Alarum.'
Just one critic, Jordan Hoffman of Entertainment Weekly, gave "War of the Worlds" a certified fresh ranking, writing, " It's certainly stupid, but it's also a great deal of fun."
Most others described the film as the worst take on Wells' 1898 novel about Martians invading Earth. Past adaptations include the Orson Welles-directed CBS Radio broadcast in 1938, a Gene Barry-starring 1953 Technicolor film and Steven Spielberg's 2005 film, which starred Tom Cruise.
Lee 'butchers the classic sci-fi parable on humankind's colonialist ills and creates an obnoxiously dull, utterly braindead (arguable bootleg) exercise in capitalist, surveillance state propaganda,' wrote one Rotten Tomatoes critic.
Some online noted that they felt like the movie's tagline — which is 'It's worse than you think' — is an appropriate way to summarize their reactions to the film itself.
Lee and the cast have not publicly addressed the reaction.
Neither Universal Pictures, which produced the film, nor Amazon Studios, which distributed it, responded to requests for comment. (Universal Pictures is a division of NBC News' parent company, NBC Universal.)
But as with some other films that receive poor reviews, the reaction to "War of the Worlds" has also made it buzzy.
Many viewers have transformed Ice Cube's reactions in various scenes into memes and GIFs.
The film has solidified a place on the online database Know Your Meme.
The website attributes the rise in online traction to a July 21 post on X from the user 'PoorOldRoloTony,' who shared a clip from the film. The user wrote, 'War of the Worlds (2025) is the worst adaption of the source material to date. It had no ideas beyond the found footage approach.' The post had been viewed 1.9 million times as of Tuesday.
Users across TikTok and X have also continued to poke fun at the acting, dialogue, oversimplified device hacking and heavy-handed messaging about mass government surveillance and conspiracy theories.
'Sounds like Ice Cube is reading directly from a script that he had never seen before...,' a TikToker wrote in the text of their video, which featured a clip from the film. The video has been viewed 1.1 million times.
One TikToker even impersonated Ice Cube, recording themselves dressed as him and reciting lines from the movie.
Some viewers have also criticized the movie's placement of Amazon products, including scenes that feature a Prime Air delivery drone and a character receiving a $1,000 Amazon gift card.
Vetz, a YouTube channel that ranks and review movies, cited the product placement as one of the main reasons the film ranks on its 10 worst movies of 2025 list.
'The worst product placement I've ever seen in my life,' said Joel, a reviewer for the channel, which has 261,000 subscribers.
On the popular movie tracking platform Letterboxd, the film averaged just 1 star from the roughly 90,000 people who logged having watched it.