Have you seen War of the Worlds? No, I’m not talking about the Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning-led film adaptation of H.G. Wells’ science fiction novel from 2005. I’m talking about the Ice Cube-led adaptation that arrived to the 2025 movies schedule last week and can be streamed with an Amazon Prime Video subscription. Don’t worry if you haven’t, as its critical reception is so bad, it’s become one of those movies that have a 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Fellow rapper 50 Cent shared a hilarious response when he learned about this.
None of the 20 reviews listed for War of the Worlds on Rotten Tomatoes gave it a positive score, and the fan-generated Popcornmeter only comes out slightly better at 18%. 50 Cent posted the following to Instagram upon seeing headlines about how poorly this sci-fi flick has been received (edited for grammar and clarity):
0 % 😳 How [do] you get a 0 percent rating 🤔Nah, somebody mad at Cube. Now I’m scared to watch it. LOL
I’m sorry, is he implying there’s some kind of conspiracy against Ice Cube that’s responsible for War of the Worlds’ dismal Rotten Tomatoes rating? I wouldn’t go that far, but I do like how this surprised 50 Cent enough that he felt the need to post about it on social media. Fingers crossed he eventually overcomes his fear and decides to watch War of the Worlds, as I need to know what he thinks of the final product. From there, I wouldn’t mind being a fly on the wall for the day when 50 Cent tells Ice Cube shares that opinion in person.
Obviously not every movie is going to be a winner, but that fact that none of the professional critics who reviewed War of the Worlds speaks volumes. Our own Philip Sledge even said it might be the worst movie he’s seen this year, writing that it’s “schlocky, flat, filled with more plot holes than Amazon references, and features too many death fake-outs to count.” And yet, Philip still had a good time watching War of the Worlds, so that counts for something.
Best case scenario, this take on War of the Worlds will become one of ‘so bad, it’s good’ movies that friends get together to watch it… perhaps with alcohol on hand. That said, I don’t see this becoming a big enough deal that it starts playing in special theatrical screenings, like Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. It doesn’t seem like it has that kind of appeal.
Ice Cube, who plays DHS officer Will Radford, is joined in War of the Worlds by Eva Longoria, Clark Gregg and Andrea Savage, among others. Rich Lee directed and Kenneth A. Golde and Marc Hyman wrote the script. 50 Cent’s last cinematic endeavor was executive producing Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, which came out in January.
