Fuck AI? Fuck tha Police? Fuck, My Amazon Package is Late!
Ice Cube’s War of the Worlds sci-fi film for Amazon is Big Tech branding gone horribly wrong.
This is not a review of War of the Worlds: Revival. No. That would require either two words (“don’t watch”), or 4,000 words to fully explain the cinematic travesty in granular detail. No, I’m singularly focused on the Amazon of it all.
Amazon Studios has been streaming low-budget movies on its Amazon Prime Video service for years, giving Amazon Prime members something to play in the background while doing laundry, homework, or scrolling through Instagram. But when Amazon acquired the Hollywood pillar Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 2022 for $8.5 billion, there was some general industry hope that the purchase was a signal that Amazon might lean into MGM’s legacy of film artistry (the James Bond franchise, the Rocky franchise, The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind).
The fear, or of course, was that Amazon might instead cynically move forward with every film fan’s worst nightmare: a tech giant pimping its film catalog and upcoming projects to blatantly promote its products. But sadly, that’s what War of the Worlds: Revival, which stars rap music legend Ice Cube (Friday, the xXx franchise), Eva Longoria (Desperate Housewives), and Clark Gregg (Agent Phil Coulson in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), boils down to in the end.
The last time we saw Ice Cube, he starred as himself on Seth Rogen’s Emmy-nominated The Studio on Apple TV+, where he signed on to play the voice of the Kool-Aid Man in a fictional film adaptation of the sugary beverage brand. In a scene where Rogen, as studio chief, alongside Ice Cube, presents the upcoming film to a Comic-Con audience, an audience member asks why AI is replacing human animators on the film. As the audience begins loudly revolting against Rogen and his AI film, a seemingly surprised Ice Cube immediately pivots away from the big studio paycheck and joins the crowd in its disgust, saying, “AI is bullshit. Fuck AI, fuck AI, fuck AI!”
Saying “fuck AI” is now de rigueur among many Hollywood insiders and crew members who stand to lose work because of the technology. But many big name actors will soon be forced to make the choice Ice Cube made in the fictional situation: become an avowed purest, or embrace the next phase of movie production technology. Ice Cube’s easy switch in that scene from company man to voice of the people is common in a Hollywood built on expediency in service of career.
Nevertheless, watching the man who once rapped “Fuck tha Police” as a part of N.W.A now leading a cast on a War of the Worlds film that is little more than an hour-and-a-half long Amazon commercial is still jarring.
H.G. Wells wept. But at least he would have gotten his Amazon delivery on time!
When H.G. Wells’ 1898 War of the Worlds novel fell into the public domain in 1965, there wasn’t an immediate rush to adapt the work. In fact, after perhaps the best adaptation of the story, in 1938 by Orson Welles via radio drama, we didn’t see a proper (and very well-made for its time) film adaptation until 1953. Afterwards, the public domain feeding frenzy began in earnest. In 1988, Paramount produced a forgettable TV series that paled in comparison to the slightly earlier alien invasion hit TV mini-series V, which aired in 1983.
And in 2005 alone, there were three film adaptations of the novel, one by Steven Spielberg, starring Tom Cruise (one of his better films). And then, for some reason, there were two TV adaptations in 2019, both decent, but not must-watch TV. There are more film and TV adaptations of the novel—public domain stories are irresistible—but these are just some of the most notable.
Ice Cube’s film version, which began production in 2020, was immediately plagued by the constraints of the pandemic’s limited contact rules. Because of this, 90% of the film plays out on Zoom meeting-style screens as Ice Cube, playing Department of Homeland Security (DHS) surveillance expert Will Radford, leads a team of people remotely trying to save the world from the invading aliens.
How is this achieved? Through the wonders of Amazon shopping technology, of course! [Spoilers ahead, but believe me, you won’t care about spoilers in this film.] Ice Cube’s daughter is in a relationship with an Amazon delivery driver (brilliant!), who manages to display the company logo and uniform far more frequently than would be normal in another film. When they figure out that the government’s secret Goliath data gathering program poses an existential threat because…the aliens feed on data (brilliant!), the team devises a plan to insert a virus into Goliath to infect and disable the aliens.
About those aliens. I was initially planning to write that these special effects look remarkably cheap, giving off a dated year 2000 look. But the VFX on Spielberg’s 2005 version were leaps and bounds better than this 2025 version, so it’s probably more accurate to say that this new movie’s special effects are like something from 1995. Yes, really.
The Amazon branding doesn’t end with the vital Amazon delivery worker (who looks like a Pete-Davidson-wasn’t-available stand-in). To get the virus into the program, they need to get a special USB thumb drive to Ice Cube. But remember, this is a no-contact Covid film production, so instead of meeting in person on screen, the Amazon driver decides to send Ice Cube a thumb drive via Amazon Prime Air—ta-da!
But wait! Because of internal Amazon rules, or something, Ice Cube must first order a thumb drive from the Amazon website to initiate the drone delivery through Amazon Prime Air. That’s right, even during a global alien attack, the Amazon website is still up and running and ready to confirm your Prime membership delivery of that cool keyboard waffle iron, or, if needed, an alien-defeating USB thumb drive.
Ice Cube is forced to actually go through the process of ordering the item on screen, you know, so the 20 viewers on Earth who haven’t seen an Amazon shopping cart page can be familiarized with how it works.
And in case you were wondering, yes, Ice Cube is forced to actually go through the process of ordering the item on screen, you know, so the 20 viewers on Earth who haven’t seen an Amazon shopping cart page can be familiarized with how it works. When the drone finally arrives, it does double duty, helping Ice Cube in the DHS facility. In one scene, the film aura farms Star Wars using a Han Solo action figure that the drone narrowly misses (they actually say the name “Han Solo!”). Off-brand for an Amazon commercial, but likely seen as worth the sci-fi geek points, I guess.
The only Amazon brand synergy missing in this entire debacle—which looks like it was shot on 2015 iPhones with on-screen interface designs from, oh, maybe 2010—is that they released the film on July 30 instead of July 8, which was Amazon Prime Day, the company’s annual online shopping event.
If none of this has convinced you to avoid this infomercial posing as a film, here are a few stand-out real lines delivered by Ice Cube as William Radford in War of the Worlds: Revival:
“Take your intergalactic asses back home! Back home!“
“I don’t have alien invasion insurance.”
“Move, bitch, get out the way!” [kicks alien tendrils aside as he escapes]
The film currently has a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a feat last achieved by Mercy in 2023 (Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Jon Voight), and Dark Crimes in 2018 (Jim Carrey).
This film is so bad, it will become legend. And because of that, trust me, many people will watch it based on sheer morbid curiosity. So in that respect, it’s an important film, if only as a cautionary tale. The lesson here is primarily for Apple, Netflix, and Disney: Even if your test screenings seemed ok, avoid Amazon’s mortal sin of lacing a film with such a garish display of branding and product symbiosis. It betrays your real motive and disabuses us of what we truly want to believe: That the new crop of streaming studios just want to tell us a great story.