{"id":1016,"date":"2025-09-07T10:45:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T10:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rallesmovingcastle.com\/?p=1016"},"modified":"2025-09-07T10:49:53","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T10:49:53","slug":"war-of-the-worlds-when-cinema-becomes-a-commercial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rallesmovingcastle.com\/?p=1016","title":{"rendered":"War of the Worlds: When Cinema Becomes a Commercial"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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The new War of the Worlds movie has been panned by critics and audiences alike. As of writing this, the movie sits at a 4% on Rotten Tomatoes, a 2.5\/10 on IMDb, and a 1\/5 on Letterboxd. Even a normal bad movie doesn’t get this level of hate. So why is it different now? What makes this movie so bad?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

First, it follows the tradition of movies set in one place with one character, or at least a limited number of characters. Movies like Buried, Locke, and Guilty all fall under this category. It was a gimmick when those films did it, and it hasn’t gotten better since.<\/span><\/p>

The entire film takes place in the main character’s office. He works for the government, spying on people.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Here\u2019s the first major hurdle.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

The main character is William Radford, played by Ice Cube. Now, Ice Cube is an absolute legend of a rapper, no ands, ifs, or buts about it. However, he is not a good actor, and since he is basically reacting to stuff alone, the central performance should be occupied by a tour de force actor since the task is so demanding. <\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Stylized illustration inspired by H.G. Wells\u2019 novel<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Ice Cube is not exactly at fault since most actors would struggle with this script.<\/span><\/p>

The script feels like it was written by an unprompted AI. No dialogue feels natural. The plot is both an invasion movie like we know from the original story, but in truth, it’s more about how evil the government is.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

The villain of the story is so one-dimensional it physically hurts me, playing into the \u201cthe government doesn’t care about the people\u201d types to such a degree that it becomes a problem. If the government is more evil than the space-evading robots hell bent on earth destruction, then why are we even telling the story of War of the Worlds?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

A side note, the aliens are ugly as sin and look like the original H.G. Wells concept had sex with an eye phone. It’s bad.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

The movie also does the death fake-out a lot. A trope I despise since it waters down the danger. Essentially, there are multiple scenes of someone in danger, some reacting, thinking they died, and then it turns out they did not die. This happens 4 times, and by the end, I was rooting for the aliens to win.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

The real problem<\/b><\/p>

All this is well and good, but I actually think this movie is a bit overhated.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Because it is not a movie at all. It’s a commercial. A commercial for Amazon, the commercial acting and writing. Since you would never hold a commercial to the same standard as a feature film, all the criticism is a bit overdone. No one is finding plot holes in the old Billy Maze commercials, right?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

The truth is, this is the only natural state of cinema. The industry has for a long time, prioritized movies made by the community to entertain rather than pushing the art form; Marvel<\/strong> <\/span><\/a>is the big sinner here.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

They push for streaming, which has gotten the films out of the movie theaters and into our living rooms. This means that the studios are now founded by the streaming services and thus, they can include as many commercials for their own products as possible.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Doing the Climax of the movie in an order on Amazon is an important plot point. We see William order a product on the Amazon website (Which still functions during an alien invasion).<\/span><\/p>

The problem with War of the Worlds is that it is now on full display just how much business has taken over the art and wonder of cinema. It feels like something secret has been broken. The act of watching a movie, to escape, to grow, and to get more well-rounded as a person, is utterly destroyed when you watch something that feels like the \u201cskip ads\u201d feature right before you watch a YouTube video.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The new War of the Worlds movie has been panned by critics and audiences alike. As of writing this, the movie sits at a 4% on Rotten Tomatoes, a 2.5\/10 on IMDb, and a 1\/5 on Letterboxd. Even a normal bad movie doesn’t get this level of hate. So why is it different now? What […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-film"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1027,"url":"https:\/\/rallesmovingcastle.com\/?p=1027","url_meta":{"origin":1016,"position":0},"title":"The Absence of Good: Why Modern Movies Feel Bad","author":"Ralle","date":"October 6, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"What makes a film truly bad, and what makes it genuinely good? 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