Key Takeaways
- The new sci-fi movie featuring Ice Cube and Eva Longoria is criticized as a 'train wreck' and poorly executed.
- This is the third attempt to adapt Orson Welles' original War of the Worlds radio presentation, following previous unsuccessful adaptations.
- The plot revolves around a security agency worker using government surveillance to monitor his daughter, only to witness an alien attack.
- The director's choice of using cell phone video chat styles detracts from the film's intended epic tone, making it feel low-budget.
- The film's premise that aliens are after human data, rather than conquest, is deemed simplistic and unoriginal.
Usually we are excited and enthusiastic about the opportunity to show you a a new sci-fi movie trailer.
Not this time.
Ice Cube, the rapper turned actor, and Eva Longoria, best known for her roles in Desperate Housewives and Dora and the Lost City of Gold star in this train wreck of a science fiction movie.
This is the third time somebody’s tried to do a movie version of Orson Welles‘ original Mercury Theater of the Air radio presentation that had the country agog, so realistic in its portrayal that some listeners actually panicked, believing it to be authentic. The previous attempt was 2005’s War of the Worlds, backed by Steven Spielberg and Amblin Entertainment, and it bellyflopped so hard you could hear it from Olympus Mons. We got a George Pal produced TV series between 1988 and 1990, and the original film happened in 1953.
In this incarnation, Ice Cube plays a security agency worker who helps surveil the populace, using the government’s millions of cameras to keep tabs on his daughter as she goes shopping, only to watch in horror as an alien tripod machine lands in the city near her and takes out a police helicopter, which of course heads straight for her. This is one of the lamest, cheapest plot setups one could imagine. Then we get some shots of what is apparently Anonymous telling us that our data is deadly, and that “they” are out to get it. And of course, when the aliens do land, the reporter says “I’ve never seen anything like it,” with the same sincerity one would expect from witnessing a really good sale on televisions at Costco.
Significant chunks of it are done in cheesy cell phone video chat takes. I suppose it’s meant as cinema verité, which tries to present the events not as they might appear in a movie but as though they had actually happened and somebody managed to shoot film or video of what was going on around them. Instead of giving the footage a “you are there” feel, it makes the trailer feel pocket sized, like it was shot for a buck-ninety-eight on a cell phone.
Which it apparently was.
If you’re going for an action adventure sci-fi horror epic, that’s not the tone you want to set. To you and me, this is burningly obvious, but apparently not to the director Rich Lee (Minority Report).
Ready for another twist? It’s not Martians. They’re not here to conquer the planet. They just want our data. Seriously. That’s the premise. “Your data is deadly.” Really? That’s the best they could come up with? This is sci-fi for idiots.
Like the footage, the invaders could literally have just phoned this one in.
The screenwriter, the director, the cinematographer and the actors all apparently did.
War of the Worlds (originally titled War of the Worlds: Revival) goes straight to Prime Video on July 30th.
