I went into this film thinking I was prepared for how bad it was going to be. But, even with all the rumblings I’ve heard, I still wasn’t ready.

War of the Worlds is a story that has been made into a movie multiple times, this one being the third iteration. And, let me tell you, they should have just stopped at the two. The 2025 War of the Worlds is viewed completely through the computer screen of our main character William Radford, played by Ice Cube. That in and of itself is a bonkers format for the scale of this story. This is a war of the worlds. That should not be told by being restricted by the confines of a computer screen.

William Radford works for the Department of Homeland Security. Hence, all the surveillance access. With this surveillance access, William not only does his job, but he tracks literally every person he care’s about. And, I mean, like, he tracks their every move, using CCTV, drones, whatever means necessary to follow someone, like his daughter, his son, and his daughter’s boyfriend. He’s actually insane and both of his children would have been valid if they had had larger crash-outs.

We follow William throughout the first part of his day, which I will get to shortly because I have a lot of questions. Rather quickly, while in the middle of trying to close an “operation”, meteors rain down from the sky and very large bio-tech hybrid aliens arise and begin to destroy everything in their path.

It’s revealed that they all feed on data, and they’re all headed to a data storage super computer named Goliath that is located underground beneath the DHS building William is working from. William teams up with some hackers. They expose the existence of Goliath (which the government had been denying), and upload a virus to all other data centers where the aliens are feeding. This works initially. But quickly the aliens adapt to the virus, and continue heading toward the DHS building. The US government, in order to keep the aliens from getting the data center, plan to bomb the building, which William is locked inside of because all government buildings went into lock down. William manages to get into the bunker where Goliath is kept and disable it. The US government calls off the bombing. The aliens are defeated, and William abandons his government job because he has realized they were lying.

There’s so much and so little to unpack at the same time, I don’t even know how that is possible. I’m just going to go through my thoughts as I watched this bad-and-not-in-a-good-way movie.

Let’s start off with the basics. Work communication seems to be over Microsoft Teams. Cool cool cool. This is something you notice because, remember, you are seeing his computer screen. So, it was weird when William was then asked to jump on a Zoom. And it wasn’t just once or twice. It was throughout the whole film. Now, far be it from me to get that bothered over semantics, but I work in Corporate America. You all work for the same entity. There is no way you’re using both. What would even be the point of that? The only logical thing that I could come up with is that it’s a Who Framed Roger Rabbit/Bugs/Daffy Mickey/Donald type situation. Like, both had to be used equally. Which is, again, fucking stupid. My better guess is that the terms are just all used interchangeably because it’s lazy writing.

Eva Longoria is there, playing Sandra, or as her Teams name calls her ‘NASA Sandra’. Because, you know how your company has your name written out in Teams with something like that? Yeah, me either. I bring these things up, again, not to be focused and harsh on such details, but to point out the sheer laziness of the whole thing. Because with any small amount of research or small amount of care, these things could be taken seriously and fixed. But, if you’re asking me to sit there and stare at the layout of a computer screen for an hour and thirty one minutes, then I’m going to pick it apart. Because the consistency with things like this is the bare minimum. All this told me is that nobody important making the film gave a damn about it.

I doubled down with that sentiment at the films climax, if you can even call it that, when all of a sudden I realized “silly me. I’ve been watching an Amazon ad this whole time.” That’s why nobody really cared. William, at the climax of the film, to get the item he needs, must have a drone carry it over to him. It’s the only way as streets are blocked and it is generally unsafe outside. Luckily, his daughters boyfriend, Mark, works for Amazon (I’m pretty sure he wears the uniform damn near the whole movie). Mark tells William that he can get him the item he needs with the drone, but that in order for the drone to turn on, William would have to order something from Amazon, because that’s the only way to activate the drone. We then get to see William as he goes to Amazon.com, gets something to put in the cart and checks out. Not to mention, we are watching this film on Amazon Prime. I should have turned the movie off then and there.

The aliens feeding on data is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Mainly because, if they are aliens, it stands to reason what each alien culture would deem “data” would be different. So, why is their definition of data our exact definition of data? It made no sense. Somebody wanted to make some kind of statement with the line “without our most precious resource, data” and it all fell so flat. Especially when you make an Amazon ad the purpose of your “movie”. To be honest, I’m getting annoyed all over again as I write this.

Like I said above, Eva Longoria is there. And I mean, she is just there. She plays a NASA scientist, which in and of itself is a tough thing to believe. It honestly makes me mad that she can now legitimately say “I’ve played a scientist in a movie”.

This film feels like it had so many plots while also barely having one. The operation that William Redford is working on at the beginning of the film is to get a hacker group by the name Distributor, who are threatening to release what they have about the Goliath program. William, having full faith in who he works for, believes everything they have to be a lie, so they must be stopped. The whole operation that unfolds is coordinated over Teams and Zoom. Teams is being used to get the search warrant and other real important information that absolutely feels like it should not be shared over Microsoft fucking Teams. An FBI Field Agent stays on a video call with William and the NSA Director (played by Clark Gregg) for the entirety of the operation. Like, she’s holding the phone to her face while holding her gun in front of her. Because, how else are you going to show what is going on when the whole movie is formatted to be the computer screen? (sarcastic)

Just before the climax of the film, William Redford realizes his son is one of the people he was looking for at the beginning of the movie. The information his son tells him rocks his world and he makes the decision to destroy his whole career, his whole livelihood in a matter of moments, when he aligns himself with the hacker group. William, buddy, good luck getting a job in cyber security after this. (He won’t actually need luck because the US Defense Security does, in fact, offer William a new job, which seems like a crazy move for a government official to make. Like, he aligned himself with hackers. You trust him around all your sensitive data now? Okay….)

Listen, this movie had no real stakes. Any amount of heart it had in the beginning seeped out quicker than the run time. You could feel the soul being drained from those involved. Ice Cube gave a cold performance and I do not even mean that as a pun (although it does work nicely). Not once did I believe that man was feeling a genuine emotion. Not once did I think that was he feeling the right amount of feeling for what the situation was. Nor did I think he was feeling the right emotion for each situation. It was truly like they had told Ice Cube to film some reactions, and then they chose from those. Like he reacted with no context. It was genuinely bizarre.

I am begging you, please do not subject yourself to this movie. It is truly not worth it.