GREAT MOMENTS IN ONLINE CONTENT: How did a new War of the Worlds movie get a 0% critical rating?
In a novelty that turns into a hindrance almost immediately, most of this unfolds on Will’s [played by Ice Cube] computer screen at his mostly empty office, where he’s working what’s described as a “graveyard” shift despite it being, you know, daytime. Actually, it’s more accurate to say that it unfolds near Will’s computer screen. Unlike past “screenlife” movies like Unfriended, War of the Worlds is not exactly rigorous about adhering to its self-imposed limitations. Though Will’s face is often display on screen as part of various video calls (which is how Unfriended and others have worked actors’ faces into a screen-only framework), the movie also flat-out cuts away to traditional shots of Will that are framed vaguely like a Zoom call but clearly take place outside of Will’s computer. This makes sense. After all, when you’ve got an actor as expressive as Ice Cube, you want unmotivated closeups that can capture every single cocked-eyebrow scowl. How will the audience know how to feel if they can’t see Ice Cube scowling at his computer screen?
That’s probably not fair to Cube, who has been quite good in plenty of other movies. The man has presence. What he does not have is the kind of subtlety or emotional range that benefits from de facto solo occupation of the screen. Really, every actor in War of the Worlds feels like they’re performing in a Zoom-style vacuum – and seemingly not as a commentary on the coldly disconnected world of digital communication. In fact, quite the opposite: in this movie, everyone video-calls everyone all the time, to better show off some of the worst visual effects ever seen in a movie bearing the Universal Pictures logo out front*. No amount of handheld phone-camera or grainy news footage can disguise how terrible the alien ships look. They wouldn’t pass muster on a whimsical Snickers ad.
So how did this happen? How did this D-grade reimagining of a public-domain property wind up going from major studio to major streaming service to the top of the charts?
The pitch meeting must have been incredible: