THE WAR OF THE WORLDS

It really is against everything I do on here to give in to mean-spirited ironicism. There’s nothing I hate more than liking a movie because it’s “soooo terrible it’s good”. This has been a plague on platforms like letterboxd, tiktok and twitter. It’s a cancer on criticism. A film that is generally considered to be bad finds an audience that enjoys it ironically and the next thing you know we get sequels and spin-offs. People think making they’re making new-age cult movies but they’re not. They’re laughing at the art and not with. It’s the modern-day Nicholas Cage effect. All Cage has to do in a movie is sneeze a little weird and people won’t shut up about how “cRaZy” he is. I hate that. I’m 44 years old. I don’t have time for that. If it’s good it’s good if it’s bad it’s bad.

Don't you get sick of bullshit like this??

In my personal opinion, this new War Of The Worlds movie is bad. But it’s worthy of some substantial discussion. It was kind of doomed from the jump for 2 reasons. First all - Amazon prime knew exactly what they were doing by making a hi-tech sci-fi movie starring Ice Cube. It plays right in to what I was just talking about. It has the formula for mean-spirited cynical movie fans to feed like ironic vampires. It’s a letterboxd comedian’s wet dream movie to write about. “iCe CuBe PlAyInG a ScIeNtIsT??? LOLOLOLZ”. On one hand we could delve in to the veiled racism behind laughing at Ice Cube playing a computer hacker/scientist. But on the other Ice Cube is a very one-note actor that always plays the some iteration of “Ice Cube”. Facial expressions, mannerism, dialogue everything. Both criticisms sort of cancel each other out.

This version of War Of Worlds is mostly harmless and somewhat entertaining. It pays homage to the original Orson Welles radio broadcast with an updated flare. Instead of taking place on the outside, the majority of the film is shot from the perspective of Zoom calls, video chats and brief news clippings teasing the alien invasion chaos taking place on the outside (a nod to Orson Welles’ “viral” radio broadcast from years ago). Totally harmless and fun.

The problem is this movie is like 5 years too late. This is a COVID/lockdown story but we aren’t in lockdown anymore. A movie about a scientist/computer hacker alone in a claustrophobic room trying to save the world from a disaster is very 2020. End of the world movies have certainly existed before C-19 but this is incredibly timely and doesn’t really work today.

I’m also disappointed in this movie’s use of lifeless AI images. It’s like they didn’t even try. They just went to some IG bot account and stole a bunch of AI images. It also doesn’t help that the aesthetic is a straight to TV SyFy channel movie.

At the end of the day I’m not going go out of my to defend a forgettable Amazon prime movie that uses bad AI images and gratuitous product placement. There’s a scene where the protagonists literally use Amazon delivery in order to get a thumb drive so they can save the world which is like - Jesus Christ, we get it. Fuck this movie.
With a few major tweaks this could have been a legitimately entertaining micro budget movie. I just hope this isn’t a sign of more things to come. …But it probably is. And all of you people that stream and watch things you don’t like ironically only have yourselves to blame. Don’t be mad if/when this gets a sequel.