Ice Cube Defends War of the Worlds

Ice Cube has defended his starring role in War of the Worlds, despite the sci-fi remake’s disastrous reception. The rapper-turned-actor co-starred with Eva Longoria and Clark Gregg in Prime Video’s adaptation of H. G. Wells’ classic 1898 novel.

Ice Cube opened up about the controversy over War of the Worlds in detail during a recent appearance on Kai Cenat’s “Mafiathon” live stream. He confirmed that the critically panned sci-fi film was actually shot “in 2020 during the pandemic,” but that it “took a minute” for War of the World to be released. “We shot it in 15 days, and it was during the pandemic,” he said. “So, the director wasn’t in there, none of the actors was in there. This was the only way we could really shoot the movie. It’s pandemic time.”

The Ride Along actor blamed limited resources during the pandemic for the many scenes where his character, Homeland Security officer Will Radford, simply watches events unfold on a computer screen. He joked: “Really, if sh—t went down, everybody would only have their screen to look at.”

Ice Cube credited the filmmaking team for using “real surveillance cameras all around the world” to create many of War of the World’s action scenes, adding: “They had to build all that sh—t.”

An official synopsis for War of the Worlds teases: “A computer security analyst working for the U.S. government finds his daily life disrupted by an alien attack. Accustomed to dealing with virtual threats, his struggle extends to secrets the government may be hiding.”

War of the Worlds faced extremely hostile reviews and debuted with a 0% critical score on Rotten Tomatoes. The film was panned as “a cheap-looking thriller” by Variety and called “a mess, but an uproarious one” by Entertainment Weekly. War of the Worlds didn’t fare much better with Prime Video subscribers, as it only logged a 21% audience score via RT.

War of the Worlds was still a solid hit for Prime Video despite its divisive reaction, as it dominated streaming charts for weeks after its release. It has since improved its score to a still-abysmal 4% rating out of 48 reviews.

War of the Worlds Producer Also Recently Defended the Movie

War of the Worlds producer Patrick Aiello came to the project’s defense prior to Ice Cube’s recent comments. Aiello told Toni’s Film Club earlier this month that “no one sets out to make a bad movie” — and insisted that was certainly the case for War of the Worlds. “No one rolls out of bed to go work for 12, 14, 16 hours a day, sometimes, 6, 7 days a week in our case, to make a bad anything,” the producer stressed. “We were only trying to entertain. It’s unfortunate that the movie was hated, or group hated, or just piled on top. We have no control over that.”

Wells’ groundbreaking novel has been adapted countless times for the stage and screen prior to Ice Cube’s version of War of the Worlds. Orson Welles famously turned the sci-fi story into a 1938 radio drama that reportedly scared some listeners into believing aliens truly were invading the United States. Perhaps the most famous film version of War of the Worlds was director Steven Spielberg’s 2005 blockbuster, which starred Tom Cruise and made more than $600 million at the worldwide box office.

War of the Worlds is streaming now via Prime Video.