Ice Cube's Terrible New Sci-Fi Movie Is A Huge Streaming Hit

Summary

Ice Cube’s War of the Worlds is the #1 movie on Prime Video.
The movie lacks tension and mystery, serving as a long Amazon commercial.
It remains a mystery if viewers enjoy the film or watch out of curiosity.

H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds has been the basis for numerous movie and TV adaptations. Some of the most notable include Steven Spielberg’s 2005 movie starring Tom Cruise and the first adaptation from 1953 directed by Byron Haskin. Of course, there is also the infamous radio play version of the story from Orson Welles, which was so dramatic and convincing that it drove a portion of its listeners to panic.

That’s not likely to be a concern with the latest iteration of War of the Worlds, an Amazon Prime production starring Ice Cube that seemed to appear out of nowhere. This new screen thriller take on the material in the vein of movies like Searching and Missing is a complete misfire that is being ravaged by critics (at least the ones who took the time to review it). Yet somehow it’s achieved a significant streaming milestone.

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Ice Cube’s War of the Worlds is the #1 Movie On Prime Video

For some reason, a lot of people are watching this thing

As of August 1st, War of the Worlds is currently the number one movie on Prime’s US and Worldwide streaming charts, according to FlixPatrol. It’s pulled ahead of Heads of State starring John Cena and Idris Elba, and is the second overall title on the entire service falling just behind The Summer I Turned Pretty. War of the Worlds took the top spot the day it premiered, quickly overtaking even the very popular Wicked.

Whether the massive viewing audience for War of the Worlds is genuinely enjoying the movie, or simply watching it out of morbid curiosity remains a mystery. The movie dropped with little to no marketing and does nto appear to have been screened for critics, as it has not even garnered enough reviews for an official Rotten Tomatoes score. Judging by the reviews that have been written for it, it’s not likely to be certified fresh any time soon. Much like its far better screen thriller counterparts, War of the Worlds mostly features quick shots of the alien invasion intercut with Ice Cube’s character sitting alone in an office. It’s a far cry from the precision-crafted chaos and danger of Spielberg’s version.

Searching and Missing both used real internet companies like Google and Facebook in their plots to appear more realistic, War of the Worlds does something similar, but it’s far more egregious and laughable. This is an Amazon movie that has multiple plot points centered around using Amazon. As Variety’s Peter Debruge noted in his review of the movie, “Even with a Prime subscription, you have to sit through two minutes of ads to watch 90 more of what amounts to a feature-length commercial for all things Amazon.” The movie also lacks the Hitchcockian tension and mystery of Searching and Missing, which crafted compelling narratives first and then built those into their format. Having watched segments of this movie, it’s clear that producer Timur Bekmembetov (who also produced Searching and Missing) wasn’t entirely sure how to make H.G. Wells’s thrilling narrative of an alien invasion work in the screen thriller genre. Regardless, the movie has plenty of eyeballs on it, but it remains to be seen if it can stay on top of the charts as more people watch and word-of-mouth gets around. If War of the Worlds is lucky, it might just achieve the coveted so-bad-it’s-good status and get even more people watching. Just make sure you have an Amazon account.

War of the Worlds is now streaming on Prime Video.