If you’re either a fan of Jasmine Valentine content or have a subscription to Prime Video, you’ll have seen how truly terrible the new adaptation of War of the Worlds is. In fact, it’s now so terrible that it’s earned an official critic score of 0% on Rotten Tomatoes (and frankly, I wish I’d had a hand in that). In a nutshell, it involves Ice Cube sitting at a computer for almost 90 straight minutes, watching YouTube clips of alien destruction while trying to save the world by ordering products from Amazon to take them down.
The subtext suggests the online retailing giant is the true villain, but if you ask me, anyone who put the new movie on without knowing what they were getting into deserves compensation. As my favorite of the scathing Rotten Tomatoes reviews (by Adam Does Movies) puts it: “I really don’t like how a lot of modern reviewers say outlandish statements like ‘this is the worst movie ever made. Mainly because it devalues films like War of the Worlds, who had to work really hard to actually be one of the worst movies ever made.”
Clearly, it’s not a great time to be Ice Cube, Eva Longoria or anyone else in the scarred-for-life cast, but it’s especially bad to be the late H.G. Wells, possibly watching his famed sci-fi story be annihilated by a streaming service. But what should War of the Worlds look like when it’s done right? For me, the adaptation that’s come the closest to perfection is the 1953 version, which you can now coincidentally stream for free on FuboTV.
Why I recommend streaming the 1953 version of War of the Worlds for free
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I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Thanks to the likes of Jeff Wayne, War of the Worlds is synonymous with sci-fi action on an enormous scale, adorned with stunning set pieces, operatic soundtracks and terror that elevates the viewing experience from merely being fiction. Given that Wayne’s soundtrack came out of 20 years after the 1953 film, we know the same vibe has always historically existed. Even just one shot of the giant UFOs with their tentacle-like legs prowling through suburban land backs this up, encapsulating the stylised horror of the decade that perfectly lends itself to the tale.
Somethings you can’t (and shouldn’t) contain to a single screen, and War of the Worlds is one of them. Our 1953 addition does enough justice to the story with strictly adhering to it word for word, pushing the special effects needle as far as it could go for the time. The fact the adaptation looks dated isn’t a bad thing – War of the Worlds is always going to be a vision of the future told from the past, and it should stay preserved that way.
If I’m being honest (and I have been since I started writing), anything that plays too hard with the stereotypical ‘digital hero’ (by which I mean a main character who stares at a screen and nothing else) is never going to live up to the magnitude of cinema that has existed before. We’re right to be so harsh on Prime Video’s take on accidentally making their parent company out to be a capitalist monster, and I hope everybody involved learns a hard and valuable lesson from the experience. There’s art that exists to challenge us, and then there’s… this. If you want to be properly perplexed by the themes and messages that Wells originally pitched us, watch the 1953 version, and ignore all the other adaptations while you’re at it.
War of the Worlds (1953) is available on FuboTV, Philo, and ironically, Amazon MGM+.
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