War of the Worlds: Revival (2025) Review — Ice Cube Leads Humanity’s Last Stand in a Bold Sci-Fi Reimagining

“War is back — but this time, the battlefield spans shattered cities, orbiting satellites, and the soul of humanity itself.” In War of the Worlds: Revival, Ice Cube trades his streetwise swagger for a Homeland Security uniform in a radical new take on H.G. Wells’ classic invasion tale. Released July 30, 2025 on Prime Video, this digital-age reimagining plunges audiences into a world under siege – and sparks a split reaction from critics and fans. Early reactions on Rotten Tomatoes and elsewhere are mixed to negative, with some praising Cube’s gritty performance and others bemoaning the film’s screen-based approach. One recent review calls Revival “one of the most breathtakingly odd things you’ll see this year”, capturing the mind-bending blend of action and absurdity at play. In this War of the Worlds review, we’ll break down the plot, themes, performances, visuals, and the Rotten Tomatoes buzz around this controversial reboot.

Quick Facts:

• Director: Rich Lee
• Screenwriters: Kenneth Golde, Marc Hyman
• Cast: Ice Cube (Will Radford), Eva Longoria, Clark Gregg, Andrea Savage, Iman Benson
• Release Date: July 30, 2025 (Prime Video)
• Runtime: ~2h 25m (screenlife-style format)
• Format: Screenlife (story unfolds entirely on phones/computers)
• Studio: Amazon / Universal / Bazelevs

Plot Overview: War of the Worlds: Revival Sets the Stage

War of the Worlds: Revival opens in a familiar sci-fi scene: an extraordinary disaster looms on every screen. Veteran hip-hop star Ice Cube is introduced as Will Radford, a top-tier Homeland Security cybersecurity analyst whose day job is tracking every digital tremor around the globe. We see Radford hunched over banks of monitors, “spends his days tracking potential threats to national security through a mass surveillance program,” according to Collider. The opening minutes ground us in a near-future crisis: freak storms and satellite blackouts suddenly erupt worldwide, pushing governments into panic. Ice Cube’s Radford is the first to see these glitches – but he’s also fighting a personal battle, having lost his wife and shut himself away in data feeds. His children – a heavily pregnant scientist daughter (Iman Benson) and a rebellious teenage son (Henry Hunter Hall) – only see him through the lens of phone screens. As Eva Longoria’s NASA scientist character Sandra warns him that meteors and “violently erratic weather” signal the coming invasion, Radford realizes something is very wrong.

Within minutes, the world explodes into catastrophe. Tripod-like alien war machines descend on major cities – Washington D.C. this time, not rural England or Manhattan – and for the first time audiences witness War of the Worlds almost entirely on desktop and phone screens. Newsfeeds flicker to life, Zoom conferences stutter, and social media hysteria plays out in real time. The White House declares “This is humanity’s last chance; we must fight this war of the worlds to save us all,” as President Jim Meskimen appears via video. From then on, the survival of the planet rides on Ice Cube’s shoulders. With only a laptop and a headset, Radford scrambles to piece together the aliens’ mystery motive. Along the way he discovers a possible government cover-up – the ominous hint that “the government might’ve known it was coming” and hidden data centers are targeted.

Unlike Spielberg’s fast-paced 2005 thriller or the original 1953 film’s wide-shot spectacles, Revival unfolds largely in tight, claustrophobic close-ups of Radford’s haunted face and his cascading computer windows. Director Rich Lee leaps from Orion-destroying battleships to the flicker of a smartphone push notification. It’s a true screenlife thriller – all of the tension is delivered through our devices, never in expansive citywide shots. Radford makes frantic video calls to coordinate a global response (often cutely captioned as “Aliens in my city!” texts), hacks into family devices for clues, and guides his resourceful crew of scientists from behind glass. If you imagined Ice Cube battling Martians with a rifle, think again – here the war is digital, waged pixel by pixel.

Themes & Direction in War of the Worlds: Revival

War of the Worlds: Revival wears its themes on its sleeve. The tagline “Your data is deadly,” emblazoned across trailers and ads, tells us everything: the invaders feed on information. This isn’t just a shoot-‘em-up — it’s a commentary on surveillance, privacy, and the digital age. As ComicBook.com observes, the film is “set against the backdrop of mass surveillance, data collection and government-tech collusion,” exploring timely questions of privacy versus security and humanity versus control. Think Orwell meets Spielberg. We see Will Radford staring at endless logs of personal data while, unbeknownst to him, his own family’s secrets are laid bare by those machines. His profession literally makes him humanity’s spy, but also its guardian: the story examines whether keeping us safe from aliens has turned into a form of oppressive watchfulness at home.

Director Rich Lee (known for music videos) and writers Golde & Hyman take a decidedly grim and gritty tone. The film feels more like a paranoid thriller than a popcorn space battle. It’s been shot under COVID restrictions – a “cyber-thriller, then. A low budget one — it was filmed in 2020 under COVID restrictions, and it shows” – so we rarely see full alien marvels; instead we hear distant otherworldly cries on the radio or see choppy news footage. This choice emphasizes dread over spectacle. The color palette is muted — greys, blues, the harsh glow of screens — giving the apocalypse a cold, industrial feel. The sound design likewise avoids sweeping orchestras; industrial rumbles and electronic bleeps dominate, reflecting the story’s focus on machinery and networks.

Lee’s vision pushes War of the Worlds into entirely new territory. Producer Timur Bekmambetov has pitched it as “the first time ever a studio-scale sci-fi epic has been produced using a format that places audiences inside the action through the lenses of phones, computers, and tablets”. Indeed, this Revival demands that viewers be glued to their devices. We jump between a chaotic Zoom meeting of world leaders, a teenage Twitch livestreaming panic, and an Instagram live of a citywide evacuation. This “immersive first-person experience” is a bold gamble: it can make the alien invasion feel immediate, but it also risks feeling more like a prolonged prank call than a movie. Some critics have been unforgiving: TechRadar’s Jasmine Valentine calls the concept a “Gen Z disaster,” complaining that “at no point does the action deviate from Zoom calls, YouTube clips, or any amount of open and closed tabs on a desktop”. To her, War of the Worlds should be “dynamic action on an incredulous scale,” not “explosions on a screen”. Fair points – but others argue that Lee’s method is exactly what makes Revival unique in this franchise. As Rolling Out notes, it’s a “fresh take on Wells’ 1898 masterpiece” that feels designed for today’s device-obsessed world.

The story also weaves in social commentary beyond tech paranoia. The sudden weather disturbances before the invasion invite parallels to climate catastrophe. The characters debate the trade-offs of security: is it better to know everything (as Radford does) or to remain blissfully ignorant? These questions hang over every scene. In effect, Revival isn’t just about alien tripods — it’s about the crisis of surveillance and how an always-watching society might face an otherworldly threat.

Performances: Ice Cube & Cast in War of the Worlds: Revival

The casting of Ice Cube as the lead is the film’s most talked-about choice. On paper, a 6’2” streetwise rapper doesn’t seem a natural fit for a tech analyst. But most reviewers agree: Cube is the movie’s best asset. As FilmStories UK puts it, “On paper, Mr. Cube is an odd choice to play a somewhat beige security specialist. In practice, he’s the film’s best asset”. This is because Cube, known for his commanding presence and gritty honesty, brings unexpected intensity to Will Radford. He channels Radford’s grief, anger, and stubborn determination with raw realism. When Radford realizes the truth behind the invasion, Cube’s furious outburst on a video call practically jumps through the screen.

Ice Cube as Homeland Security analyst Will Radford, monitoring alien signals through his computer screens in War of the Worlds: Revival. Critics note Cube’s grounded, intense portrayal as key to the film’s impact. In a recent Q&A, ReelGood’s guide to streaming TV even pronounces, “Ice Cube delivers a grounded, intense performance as Will Radford, anchoring the emotional and suspenseful core of the film”. In other words, Cube carries the movie. His gravelly voice over emergency broadcasts and terse commands (“God damn,” he mutters at one point) give Revival a hard edge. Watching Cube’s reaction shots – wide-eyed horror, clenched-jaw determination – is often more entertaining than the alien action we rarely see. FilmStories even jokes that his panicked line readings sound as if “the first letter of each word begins with a capital letter,” underlining how intense he plays it.

The supporting cast is solid if not spectacular. Eva Longoria’s Sandra is the voice of science and reason. She has the thankless job of explaining the eerie weather patterns and alien strikes to Cube’s Radford (sometimes repeating herself on the phone just to make sure we’re paying attention). Longoria does what she can with the expository role, projecting fear and urgency as more of the world falls. Clark Gregg pops up as Radford’s no-nonsense boss (the director of Homeland Security). He shows up briefly in a gym mid-crisis (bringing some comic relief) and as the politician bouncing video calls, but ultimately doesn’t have much to do beyond giving orders. Andrea Savage and Iman Benson have small but pivotal roles – one as Radford’s co-worker FBI agent, the other as his daughter who might hold the key to fighting the invaders. Devon Bostick appears as a government official, and Michael O’Neill as the jittery President. None of these characters are deeply developed, but each delivers as needed. Most of the emotional weight rests on Cube’s shoulders.

Is Revival a career-defining role for Ice Cube? Not exactly — it’s more of a novelty in his filmography. He’s played tough guys and leaders before, but rarely someone so visibly vulnerable. Still, his presence is the main reason to tune in. As one streaming guide bluntly puts it, Cube’s role here is “central to [the film’s] success and modern edge”. Longoria fans will appreciate seeing her warn and coax Cube’s character, but it’s Cube’s internal struggle that propels nearly every scene. In the end, the movie might best serve as a showcase: War of the Worlds Revival reminds audiences that even a legendary rapper can lead an alien invasion – if you give him the right chair and computer monitors to stare at.

Visuals & Sound: Alien Atrocity in a Pixelated World

Visually, Revival is a study in restraint. The aliens themselves are rarely shown in full glory – a far cry from the towering tripods and fiery chaos of earlier films. Instead, we often see them as pixelated news clips or flashing sensor alerts on screens. Think of the creatures more as data points than monsters. The few close-ups hint at thin, long-limbed invaders with glowing eyes, but it’s their digital footprint – draining power from cell towers, hacking satellites – that’s most striking. For most of the film, the monsters fight off-screen. The tension comes from what we don’t see: the shudder of a terrified newsroom feed, the blurred silhouette rushing past a webcam, the red exclamation icon on a world map.

A classic 1953 War of the Worlds film poster highlights the Earth-shaking spectacle of Martian invasion in earlier adaptations. By contrast, Revival contains its action behind screens, trading Hollywood grandeur for a gritty, digital style. The movie’s aesthetic mirrors this approach. City streets look grim and abandoned (a credit to the film’s 2020 lockdown-era production), drenched in rain and emergency lights. Dark shadows and rain-drenched glass dominate, evoking dystopian classics more than pulpy sci-fi. When Radford works, it’s always bathed in the blue glow of monitors. We see reflected screens in his glasses (a motif TechRadar notes in the trailer), emphasizing his role as the watcher. A wide shot of Washington D.C., for example, isn’t a bustling city but an eerily quiet one, occasionally interrupted by the beam of a Martian warhead.

Sound design is equally unconventional. Instead of musical swells, Revival leans on ambient hums and jarring digital effects. Smartphone alerts and sirens punctuate the score. This choice reinforces the theme: the world’s scariest thing here is the endless ping of notifications and the hum of a server, not the stomp of a tripod. It works to heighten anxiety, much like found-footage horror does – every beep feels like something bad might pop into the screen. Some viewers might miss the adrenaline of a classic alien invasion battle cry, but the shift in audio style suits the story’s low-budget, locked-down roots. In a way, the movie “trades orchestral bombast for industrial dread,” as one review could put it – and for better or worse, it mostly works.

As for spectacle, Revival scores middle-of-the-road. The digital screens allow for some clever visual flourishes (e.g. how a group chat morphs into a chaotic evacuation plan), but the actual destruction feels subdued. There are no collapsing skyscrapers or citywide panic sequences beyond a few shaky camera-phone clips of mass transit crashes. This will disappoint fans expecting blockbuster-level visuals. But remember: this War of the Worlds is intimate by design. Its big set pieces are global crises glimpsed through a screen rather than front-row seats. By the finale, when Radford finally sees the invaders in full, the brief payoff is eerie rather than explosive – like seeing two of Wells’ Martian tripods in a field by moonlight. You sense there’s more to them, but the film closes before showing it. The focus remains on Ice Cube’s reaction to the nightmare, not on the nightmare itself.

Rotten Tomatoes War of the Worlds: Revival Score & Fan Reaction

Critics and audiences really are split on Revival. It didn’t even have a traditional press screening – Joe.ie reports it was “quietly released on Prime Video… and not shown to critics,” a bad sign for star-driven tentpoles. The early reviews that have trickled in are mostly negative. ComicBook.com notes that, out of a handful of user scores on IMDb, “only 10 of 43” reviews gave it above a 6/10 and “most skew 2 or below”. Likewise, Joe.ie bluntly states “early reviews… do not seem to be positive for the most part”. Fans on social media are mocking the premise (some jokingly call it War of the Revival), and reaction memes abound. On the other hand, ice-cube fan boards find the movie bizarrely entertaining because of its limitations (the phrase “so bad it’s good” has popped up).

Rotten Tomatoes itself has been surprisingly hush-hush: at press time, there’s no official critic Tomatometer yet (the film’s likely below Fresh). The audience score is hovering in the 40s percentile (social chatter suggests something like 42% on RT’s audience metric, though take that with salt). Clearly, regular viewers are not overwhelmingly impressed. Some critics call it an “Amazon Prime Air commercial” for all the product-placement（ReadySteadyCut: “War of the Worlds: Revival feels more like an ad for fast delivery than a sci-fi film”）. Others accuse it of “screenlife masochism,” dragging the saga out to 2h25 with endless desktop views.

Yet, not all reviews are scathing. ReelGood’s streaming blog even defends the film’s core, pronouncing Ice Cube’s turn “absolutely” worth watching. And among genre enthusiasts, some appreciate the novelty: one Redditor quipped that seeing Ice Cube in this scenario is “comedy gold,” echoing what FilmStories observed. The consensus seems to be: Revival is an oddity. It’s earnest about its themes and Cube’s performance is strong, but many feel the storytelling format wears thin. As Valentine put it, Revival likely won’t “set the world on fire,” which is bad news for a War of the Worlds revival.

War of the Worlds: Legacy (1953 vs 2005 vs 2025)

To appreciate Revival, it helps to compare it with its cinematic siblings:

• 1953 (Byron Haskin): The original big-screen War of the Worlds was a Cold War-era fable, with Ray Harryhausen’s famous tripods invading California. It emphasized the horror of unstoppable machines in a post-World War II context.
• 2005 (Steven Spielberg): Spielberg’s War of the Worlds was a blockbuster disaster movie. Tom Cruise plays a desperate father in New York City trying to save his children amid chaos. It’s fast, noisy, and all about survival instinct (famous for the Avengers-builder coming down).
• 2025 (Revival): Rich Lee’s reboot moves the action to Washington D.C. and introduces tech-age twists. It’s the first studio-scale War of the Worlds shot almost entirely in “screenlife” format. Ice Cube leads as a Homeland Security analyst, and the aliens attack our data centers instead of landmark buildings. In this version, humanity’s greatest weapon might not be guns at all, but knowledge and hope. The tagline “Your data is deadly” underlines how this trilogy-turns-upside-down focuses on information as the battlefield.

Each film reflects its time: the original mirrored 1950s paranoia, Spielberg’s echoed 2000s anxiety, and Revival taps into 2020s fears of surveillance and cyberwarfare. Whether this reboot stands with those legends is debatable, but it certainly stakes its own claim in the franchise’s story.

Final Thoughts: Is War of the Worlds: Revival Worth Watching?

So, is this War of the Worlds: Revival worth your watchlist? It’s a niche thrill. Yes, if you’re a die-hard sci-fi or Ice Cube fan curious to see him tackle an alien apocalypse in a totally new way. Cube’s intense, grounded performance makes the emotional center of the movie work, and the film does ask interesting questions about technology and trust. The screenlife format is novel – or at least, it tries to be – and some viewers may enjoy its fresh take on an old tale.

But no, if you crave traditional alien spectacle. This isn’t a high-octane thrill ride but a slow-burn techno-thriller. Many action fans may find it frustratingly subdued, and the pacing does drag in parts (remember, it runs nearly 2.5 hours without a single wide battle scene). If you enter hoping for Spielberg-like visuals, you’ll be disappointed. Also, the negativity on Rotten Tomatoes and elsewhere isn’t entirely undeserved: you’ll have to squint at a computer screen the whole time, and the script has a few plot holes.

In the end, War of the Worlds: Revival is a bold experiment with mixed results. It doesn’t completely justify its existence — as one critic notes, a good alien invasion is “bigger than you can ever comprehend”, and reducing Wells’s grand tale to desktop video chats may feel like it sacrifices some of the magic. Yet it does bring something new: a reflection of today’s fears back at us. As a reviewer for What to Watch puts it, by taking the classic invasion into cyber-territory, Lee’s version majorly highlights our anxieties about data safety and conspiracies.

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If you’re down to watch Ice Cube face down extra-terrestrials on Zoom – and maybe chuckle at some absurd dialogue along the way – Revival has its moments. It’s more odd than awesome, but it has enough grit to keep you intrigued. Just don’t expect to have your world upended; instead, remember that in Revival, as its closing message suggests, humanity’s greatest weapon is hope.

War of the Worlds: Revival doesn’t just revive the past — it reminds us that humanity’s greatest weapon isn’t firepower, but hope.