War of the Worlds. Did it really need to be done again? Well if you said "no" you would be correct. Spielberg and Tom Cruise already teamed up for the best adaptation of this story that we are going to get so it boggles the mind that someone would even attempt to do so.
The excuses are flying about how this movie was made during Covid so that is why there are no actual outside shots (there are a few) and what not but at the end of the day I think that the Covid thing in fact being true for them wasn't the main motivating factor behind making it. Someone thought they were creating a new type of film kind of like how "found footage" made tons of money for the few people that were able to do it in an inventive way.
If that picture of Ice Cube staring intently at a computer screen does it for you then you are in luck because that is 90% of the entire film overlapped with what sort of programs he is using on the computers.
This is bad enough in itself but here's where it gets even worse. The entire cornucopia of programs that Ice Cube is using throughout the film are various real world products such as Whatsapp, Facebook, and dear lord Microsoft Teams. He swaps so easily through all of them and they function oh so perfectly and everything happens without a hitch.
Man would you look at that! Those products look very convenient! I think I will start to use those as well! Said no one ever. Remember when Spiderman kept referring to Bing and used it many times in a film? Sorry Pete, nobody is going to use Bing, ever. The product placement in this film makes me want to avoid using those products even more than I already do.
Ok, so the product placement is just absurd and it is mentioned over and over again in the film. There are no Zoom calls or whatever other stupid-ass competing products that exist to destroy the souls of working people these days.
For me, one of the funniest parts of this entire thing is that Ice Cube is a Homeland Security guy named Will Radford, and he apparently is very high up in the chain of clandestine abilities and well, he keeps his personal Whatsapp and his MS Teams and his FB on the same super-secure computer that he is using to do all the stuff like remote control drones and override everyone's CCTVs. That seems like that would be completely normal and allowed at DHS, doesn't it?
When we do get to see something outside of Ice Cube's lockbox of a room and see the tripod alien creatures, the CGI on them is actually pretty terrible, Cloverfield looked a lot better than this. That's likely one of many reasons why they went this route because something doesn't have to look nearly as real when the feed is from a black and white session with a military drone.
Seriously, $400,000 drones don't have color cameras? GTFOH
Another thing that really annoyed me about this is something that really annoys me in real life and that is the constant notification alerts that Cube keeps getting all throughout the film. Also, in times of trouble he and the people that he is contacting always decide to do facetime or video calls because that is totally what someone would do in a time of crisis, right?
I don't want to spoil why but part of the story is completed only because of the fact that Amazon was able to deliver something that they needed VERY quickly. How's that for customer service huh? The entire world is under attack yet Amazon's logistics found a way to continue their track record of excellence.
Also, we are constantly told that the satellites are all not functioning...via a perfect mobile phone video call from a remote location. I'm not a telecom expert, but... eh, nevermind.
The excuse of this being filmed during Covid is already wearing thin with the public because check it, that was years ago yo, and we might have been a bit more sympathetic if they had released it back then but now? Now this is just shite. It doesn't help that Ice Cube is meant to be one of the world's most tech savvy computer nerd guys, but he reverts to the street talk delivery akin to his time in NWA on a regular basis.
There are a few movies that focus on the today's life of communicating with most people via technology and those are done well. This movie is a 90 minute advertisement for Meta, Tesla (yes, Tesla too), Amazon, and Microsoft.
Should I watch it?
I think the only reason anyone should so much as gander in the general direction of this film is to see exactly how terrible it really is. This film has no redeeming qualities. I watched it for about an hour hoping that maybe, just maybe, it could fall into the "so good it's bad" category, but nah man, it isn't even close to being that.
The film takes itself 100% seriously and just everything about it is terrible. It deserved the 0% rating it had on RT and I don't think that the producers are event trying to save it anymore. It's too late.
This film can only be legally streamed on Amazon.. hate watch it at your own peril