“War of the Worlds” was a radio play from 1938 which became very popular. Multiple adaptations popped up in the form of modern day movies that exist under the same name. There was a 2005 movie directed by Stephen Spielberg, which starred Tom Cruise. The most recent version was released in July of this year and stars Ice Cube.
The 2025 version starts off with Willam Radford, who is a surveillance and threat assessment professional at the Department of Homeland Security. After his wife’s death, he takes it into his own hands to always know the whereabouts of his family. His daughter is a scientist, and his son is unemployed. One day, a hacker titled The Disrupter conveys a message through YouTube about how the government is condensing all the data into one big server room underground. Shortly after this, meteors fall from the sky across the globe, eventually cracking open and releasing giant alien robots. These robots begin to attack and destroy everything for what seems to be no reason. They eventually find out the aliens are stealing their data.
The plot itself is not bad. However, the movie’s overall execution of the plot is what lowers the overall quality of the movie. It built itself up, and tore itself down by defying its own logic.
One of the main problems being the numerous plot holes. For example, when the alien consumes all the world’s data, everything shuts down. Every single currency loses all its value, all the planes fall out of the sky and oil tankers blow up. However, later in the movie, there are military planes trying to bomb the aliens. Also after the data deletion, websites are gone too except for Facebook and Youtube, which are highly convenient for the characters. Both of these examples expose the major plot holes shown throughout the movie
The acting in this movie was atrocious, with the characters only conveying emotion a few times, and even then it was unnatural. For example, when William is helping to save his daughter from an injury, she lectures him about how he has no power, while he is actively saving her life. She expresses emotion in the completely wrong situation, which removes any sense of importance behind her speech. Another example of the bad acting happens when the aliens first invaded, the U.S. was fighting them off and killing tons of them, but the only joy seen from William is a fake smile, some weak arm pumps, and a series of unenthusiastic yesses.
Probably the most annoying part of the movie is how it only ever takes place from William’s computer. The face of William can be seen through his webcam. The rest of the scenes can be seen from the POV of his computer screen. Though the camera does shift to the POV of surveillance cameras throughout the world, they are all shown through the computer screen.
The CGI in this movie was also horrible. It did not look visually appealing, with one of the only camera effects being an annoying camera shake.
Ultimately, this movie definitely is not worth the watch. The 2005 version is definitely a more enjoyable experience.