Latest news with #TheWaroftheWorlds'
New York Post
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Shockingly bad ‘War of the Worlds' is one of the worst movies of the decade
movie review WAR OF THE WORLDS Zero Stars Zero Stars. Running time: 91 minutes. Rated PG-13 (some sci-fi action/violence, strong language and bloody images). On Prime Video. 'The War of the Worlds' is a seminal 1898 Martian-attack novel by H.G. Wells. And in 1938, it was turned into a national-panic-inducing radio broadcast by Orson Welles. Advertisement Now, Prime Video's noxious new movie adaptation of the story, starring Ice Cube, has got me feeling unwells. It's easily one of the worst films of the decade — a war on our will to live. E.T. Extra-Terrible. The Search for Schlock. How has what should've been a standard-issue space-invader explosion fest turned into a brainless corporate HR instructional video? Advertisement Step aboard the time machine. Director Rich Lee's repellent film was shot way back in 2020 with strict Covid rules, which means the whole travail is just a series of Zoom calls at Ice Cube's character William's office. Cube in a cubicle. Just what everybody wants to watch after work: Ice Cube typing in his password. 5 Ice Cube stars in a new adaptation of 'The War of the Worlds.' Amazon Prime Advertisement Once completed, 'The War of the Worlds' sat on a shelf for five years. It should've stayed put. But no. The mess was quietly dropped on Amazon Prime last week like an afternoon package delivery. In the studio's sole wise decision, they decided not to screen this garbage for critics ahead of time. If all that doesn't scream 'hit!'… Advertisement Actually, 'War' has shot up to No. 5 on the Prime Video charts in the US, thanks to bored masochists. But those gluttons for punishment have now discovered what poorly made, confusing, logic-free muck it is. 5 A global alien invasion is over inside of 90 minutes. Amazon Prime The story, which the filmmakers have had only 127 years to adapt, appears to take place in real time. A global alien invasion — America, Russia, China, Africa — begins and ends inside 91 minutes. 'Independence Day' is a documentary next to 'The War of the Worlds.' And Ice Cube in a cardigan is no 1990s Will Smith. His off-putting character is hardly up to the task of saving the planet in two hours from a swivel chair. Will works at the Department of Homeland Security tracking terrorist threats via a network of cameras and drones. 5 Eva Longoria plays a NASA employee. Amazon Prime Advertisement Ice Cube shouts at the monitor, makes clownish facial expressions and places endless video calls — to Will's pregnant daughter, his tech-obsessed son and Eva Longoria's Sandra, who is employed by NASA in some vague capacity. Mystifyingly, there is nobody else at this office in, I repeat, the Department of Homeland Security during the middle of the workday. A creep, William also obsessively stalks his kids' movements using company equipment. Then, Earth is struck by coordinated asteroids that contain giant alien robots that start wreaking havoc in major world cities. Advertisement We see the action, such as it is, from news broadcasts and drone footage. 5 Most of the movie is Ice Cube's character Will on Zoom calls. Amazon Prime The special effects are a huge step down from Steven Spielberg's 'War of the Worlds' starring Tom Cruise 20 years ago. This CGI would actually be very good if it weren't for the music video of 'Blue' by Eiffel 65. Advertisement Alas, the only thing blue here is the poor viewer. Can the script make up for the cheap-o visuals? Nope. I was certain the dialogue was written by a hamster with ink on its paws until I checked the IMDB page. The screenplay by Kenny Golde and Marc Hyman gets overcomplicated because they're desperately reaching for something to spice up Ice Cube staring at a computer at his desk. Advertisement 5 Amazon should scrap this movie from their streaming service. Amazon Prime So, William also pursues a WikiLeaks-like hacker called the Disruptor, who is trying to expose the US Government's plan to spy on citizens. Improbably, the manner in which the Disruptor subplot unfolds is more preposterous than the alien attacks. The day is saved toward the end when an Amazon delivery guy pilots a drone to ship a thumb drive across Washington, DC. That really happens. However, the best way for Amazon to protect humanity would be to take this abomination off its streaming service.
Extra.ie
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Extra.ie
Ice Cube's latest venture leaves critics and fans aghast
The tagline of Ice Cube's latest film is 'It's worse than you think', and by the looks of the reviews, it must be very accurate. 'War of the Worlds' has debuted at 0% on film review site Rotten Tomatoes, while earning a 3.2/10 rating on IMDb. The 2025 film, directed by Rich Lee, is a sci-fi thriller based on H.G. Well's 1898 novel 'The War of the Worlds' and stars Ice Cube, Eva Longoria and Iman Benson. Ice Cube has a starring role in the 'worst movie ever'. Pic: War of the Worlds The synopsis reads: 'A computer security analyst working for the U.S. government finds his daily life disrupted by an alien attack. Accustomed to dealing with virtual threats, his struggle extends to secrets the government may be hiding.' Critics have been destroying the film in their reviews, with comments ranging from 'one of the worst movies of the decade so far' to 'hilariously bad, until it becomes risibly ridiculous'. One review said: 'I really don't like how a lot of modern reviewers say outlandish statements like 'This is the worst movie ever made'. Mainly because it devalues films like War of the Worlds, who had to work really hard to actually be one of the worst movies ever made.' Another reads: 'Told entirely through screens and digital devices, this 'screenlife' thriller tries to bring H.G. Wells' classic into the tech era, but not only fails at being entertaining, but fails at being a movie itself.' Fans have been sharing clips from the movie online and posting their own reviews which has made some actually want to see it even more. that new war of the worlds movie was hilariously awful — highfred (@highhfred) August 1, 2025 One fan wrote: 'Mega, mega garbage. Don't waste even a second with this production.' Another shared: 'There are bad movies you can at least enjoy watching by poking fun at how bad they are. Then there is this awful, awful waste of time. Insult to movies.' A third added: 'Horrible, the worst I've ever seen, I'd like to invite a time machine and avoid seeing it.' Yet another said: 'Just when you think it couldn't get any worse because it was already rock bottom, it surprises you by getting even worse.' War of the Worlds (2025) is the worst adaption of the source material to date. It had no ideas beyond the found footage approach, and even then the film is struggling to find ways to present coherent scenes. Ice Cube is so lost. Maybe one of the worst movies I've ever seen. — Rolo Tony (@PoorOldRoloTony) July 31, 2025 It's not easy to get the lowest possible rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 'War of the Worlds' has just joined an exclusive list. Other 0% movies include 2009's 'Transylmania', a spoof horror in which 'a group of college kids do a semester abroad in Romania and realise that if the partying doesn't kill them, the vampires just might', and 2019's 'The Queen's Corgi', a Belgian animated film where the 'British monarch's favourite dog gets lost from the palace and finds himself at a dog fight club'. 'War of the Worlds' is available to watch on Amazon Prime Video and according to many of the reviews, it feels like a walking advertisement for the company. an actual shot from the new war of the worlds movie — Kong Monke (@Kong_The_Monke) July 30, 2025 One scene features Ice Cube ordering a flash drive on Amazon to be delivered by 'Prime Air' and his co-star Devon Bostick even utters the line 'it's the future of delivery' in the movie. Despite the horrific reviews, it appears the film will get plenty of watches – even if it is just from fans seeing for themselves how bad it is.
Chicago Tribune
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: In Lifeline Theatre's ‘War of the Worlds,' comedy wins out over human drama
Lifeline Theatre's new adaptation of the 1898 H.G. Wells novel 'The War of the Worlds' has many of the hallmarks of a campy sci-fi B movie: cheesy dialogue, exaggerated stock characters and visuals with the low-budget charm of mid-aughts 'Doctor Who.' With these bold stylistic choices by adapter John Hildreth and director Heather Currie, the play satirizes contemporary American society in an unconventional take on the science fiction classic. While Lifeline's version has its entertaining moments, the comedic approach comes at the expense of the story's human drama. Hildreth's loose adaptation changes the setting from southern England to northern Illinois, name-checking a litany of familiar cities, suburbs and rural townships throughout the play. The scientists who first discovered unusual activity happening on Mars work at 'the renowned Illinois Technological Institute, outside of Skokie, Illinois,' a fictional locale that is repeatedly introduced with the exact same wording until it becomes a mantra of sorts. This setting makes sense for a Chicago production, more so than English towns such as Woking and Weybridge, but the hyperlocal references sometimes feel a bit too cute. Professor Wittington (Mark Mendelsohn) narrates much of the action, and the dialogue is interspersed with clips of fictional TV news broadcasts — a nod to the format of Orson Welles' infamous 1938 radio adaptation, which reportedly convinced some listeners that aliens were actually attacking the United States. The professor and a small crew of scientists from the Institute, including an artificially intelligent humanoid called Assistant Professor Whitehurst (Amanda Link), investigate a series of strange explosions on the surface of Mars. Months later, the mystery is solved when cylindrical space capsules begin to crash on Earth, letting loose an army of giant metallic tripods wielding weapons that blast deadly heat rays. With Illinois at the epicenter of a national and potentially global crisis, the play satirizes a range of all-American ideologues: conspiracy theorists, doomsday preachers, isolationists and jingoistic military types. Even J.B. Pritzker gets a sendup with Anthony Kayer's performance as the fictional governor of Illinois. Reading 'The War of the Worlds' as a satire is not a novel interpretation; Wells himself acknowledged that the book's anti-imperial themes were inspired by the brutality of European colonialism. But at Lifeline, the comedic tone is dialed up so high that the social commentary loses some of its bite. The production team augments the cast's over-the-top performances with floor-to-ceiling tentacles (set designer Lindsay Mummert), bursts of green light from the heat rays (lighting designer Sarah Riffle) and warbling sound effects that evoke a 1950s sci-fi film (sound designer Joe Griffin). The onstage violence is occasionally macabre but never gruesome; when Whitehurst, the android, loses both arms in battle, their silver-tipped severed limbs go flying (props designer Jenny Pinson), but none of the human characters shed visible blood. Later, during the dissection of a captured Martian, the creature's blue and orange color scheme mimics the Illini jacket that the governor previously appeared in (costume designer Aly Amidei). What gets lost in this inventive production are the human relationships that could give it more heart. For most of the play, Professor Wittington thinks that his wife, Dr. Wittington (Jocelyn Maher), has been killed by the Martians, but this emotional arc is overshadowed by the narrative weight his character bears. Since Lifeline can't recreate an alien invasion onstage any more realistically than Shakespeare could cram armies into his 'wooden O,' audience members must exercise their imaginations to picture the battles that Professor Wittington describes. There's little room for character development amid the action sequences, so the play doesn't have much of an emotional impact despite its high stakes for humankind. The inhabitants of Earth never get answers to the question of what they've done to deserve this catastrophe, but the play points the finger back at humanity by claiming that war is our greatest export and that the militaristic Martians offer a glimpse into our collective future. Toward the end, Whitehurst has a crisis of faith, revealing that the scientists have programmed the android with some sense of belief in god and an afterlife. It's a strange interlude that hints at the often-fraught relationship between science and religion. While hardcore sci-fi fans may be disappointed by this 'War of the Worlds,' those who appreciate the genre's more irreverent side will likely enjoy it. Lifeline never shies away from scaling epic stories to fit onto its small stage, and the company's gutsy creativity is evident in this latest world 'War of the Worlds' (2.5 stars) When: Through July 13 Where: Lifeline Theatre, 6912 N. Glenwood Ave. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes Tickets: $20-$45 at 773-761-4477 and
