Rich Lee’s War of the Worlds, starring Ice Cube as Will Radford, is not so much an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ novel as it is a bureaucratic meltdown with aliens, flash drives, and a baby shower that somehow ends the apocalypse. It’s a film that asks: what if the fate of humanity depended on a disgruntled dad, a pregnant daughter, and a gamer son with a vendetta against cloud storage? And then it answers: we probably shouldn’t have asked.
The title War of the Worlds suggests interplanetary conflict, existential dread, and the collapse of civilization.What we get is a series of tense Zoom calls, a few meteors— and aliens who majored in data science. These E.Ts don’t want land or resources—they want metadata. They arrive in giant machines, sniff out server farms, and slurp information— their free Wi-Fi at the truck stop that is earth.
Ice Cube plays Will Radford with the energy of a man who’s been asked to reboot the internet using only parental disappointment. He monitors his children through a government surveillance program, which is somehow legal and emotionally devastating. Eva Longoria, as NASA scientist Sandra Salas, spends most of her scenes explaining alien behavior while visibly regretting her career choices. Clark Gregg’s DHS director, Briggs, is a walking policy memo with a haircut.
The plot absurdly unfolds— more of a tech support call gone wrong than an actual story. Dave, Will’s son, is secretly the hacker “Disruptor. No, it’s not a Fortnite skin- just the key to humanity’s survival. Faith, Will’s daughter, is pregnant and a biomedical researcher who invents a cancer-destroying code that doubles as alien kryptonite. Her boyfriend Mark, an Amazon delivery driver, delivers the flash drive containing this code— the most crucial package in history—no signature required.
The aliens, who feed on data, are drawn to a surveillance system called Goliath. The government knew this and turned it on anyway because nothing says national security better than inviting interstellar parasites onto your hard drive. Will discovers this, gets locked out of the system, and then breaks back in with the help of Dave and his hacker friends—most of whom are promptly vaporized. The virus they plant works for about five minutes before the aliens shrug it off—just another annoying pop-up ad.
Themes of privacy, redemption, and family are sprinkled throughout. Will’s final line—“Now, I’m watching you”—is meant to be profound but lands with the grace of a dad trying to be cool at a PTA meeting. The film wants to critique surveillance culture but ends up endorsing it through sheer confusion. The aliens are defeated, but the real enemy—plot coherence—remains undefeated.
Rich Lee’s direction is technically present. Scenes happen. Characters move. Dialogue is spoken. There are moments of accidental brilliance, like the insectoid creatures harvesting data with tiny USB tongues, but these are buried under exposition and long stretches of screen-staring. The pacing is erratic, the tone veers between earnest and absurd, and the climax involves a bunker, a flash drive, and a baby shower invitation.
As an adaptation of H.G. Wells, this film is a distant cousin who shows up uninvited and insists they’re part of the family. There are aliens, yes, and a vague sense of global panic, but the philosophical weight of Wells’ original is replaced by tech jargon and family drama. It’s not quite bad enough to be one of the 100 worst films of all time, but it’s definitely loitering near the entrance.
The acting is earnest but misaligned. Ice Cube delivers his lines with conviction, but the emotional stakes are buried under surveillance protocols. Longoria and Gregg provide exposition with the enthusiasm of people reading terms and conditions. The younger cast brings energy, but the script gives them little to work with. The performances reflect the film’s broader problem: a lack of cohesion between concept and execution.
War of the Worlds is a hit-and-miss spectacle with more misses than hits. It works best when it leans into its own absurdity—when the aliens eat data, when the hacker son becomes a hero, when the baby shower becomes a symbol of hope. But these moments are isolated and unsupported. The film never builds momentum or earns its resolutions. It is a farce, a fumble, and two flash drives away from greatness.
Grade: C−. Streaming on Amazon Prime.
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