The new Prime Video trailer for War of the Worlds is already a Gen Z disaster waiting to happen

New Prime Video movie War of the Worlds is coming to the streaming service on July 30, and out of everything new on Prime Video in July 2025, this just might be the most bizarre. I’m talking about the same ‘War of the Worlds’ as H.G. Wells’ epic sci-fi novel, and later the 1978 Jeff Wayne musical with the giant spider robot now synonymous with the IP. There was even a 2005 movie with Tom Cruise, which looked much more like the traditional action movie we’d expect.

Here’s what we know about the 2025 version: The movie will follow Will Radford (Ice Cube), a top cyber-security analyst for Homeland Security, who “spends his days tracking potential threats to national security through a mass surveillance program, until an attack by an unknown entity leads him to question whether the government is hiding something from him … and the rest of the world.”

With the tagline “your data is deadly,” this lesson in an unmanageable digital footprint is about to hit us in the face with all the tact of a mandatory school assembly. The more I watch the War of the Worlds trailer – and trust me, I can’t stop – the more I’m dumbfounded that this is what our collective creativity has come to. Is the new Prime Video movie going to set the world on fire? Probably not, and that’s bad news for Gen Z.

New Prime Video movie War of the Worlds is really just Ice Cube fighting aliens on Zoom

Culturally, we love to find someone to blame. For example, if things significantly change in a well-known franchise, fans are likely to blame certain audiences or social demographics as the reason why. As far as Prime Video’s War of the Worlds is concerned, it looks like a cheap ploy to make the once complex lore of a science-fiction classic more palatable to younger viewers. Whether that’s even what they want to see almost doesn’t matter… young’uns will be responsible for a bad film if there’s even a sniff of modern technology used.

As you can see from the trailer above, War of the Worlds is going to be entirely set on a computer screen. At no point does the action deviate from Zoom calls, YouTube clips, or any amount of open and closed tabs on a desktop. This is far from a new concept, with horror movies like Megan is Missing and Missing (weirdly, a theme here) regularly pivoting to digital means of storytelling. But to not have any grounding in reality at all is more rarely seen, and honestly? I don’t think it serves a purpose at all.

Aside from the laziness I’ve already discussed, I also don’t think the concept does the original story any justice. When you think of War of the Worlds, you think of dynamic action on an incredulous scale, complete with grandiose set pieces and earth-shattering worldbuilding. Wells’ story is something that’s bigger than you can ever comprehend, even if the far-off premise genuinely feels like it could happen one day. Reduce all of that to explosions on a screen, and what magic do you have left?

Ice Cube could completely take me by surprise and pull the best new Prime Video movie of 2025 out of his back pocket, but I highly doubt it. If we’re being honest, there’s no real reason why this War of the Worlds should exist, only strengthening the argument that more movies should be based on original ideas.

The new Prime Video trailer for War of the Worlds is already a Gen Z disaster waiting to happen