War of the Worlds (2025)
Directed by Rich Lee
No — War of the Worlds is not especially woke, scoring 25 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
There is a moment in War of the Worlds when a flash drive is delivered to Ice Cube by a Prime Air drone, carried by the Amazon employee who happens to be dating his pregnant daughter.
Consciousness Markers
Ice Cube headlines as a Black DHS analyst, with Eva Longoria, Iman Benson, and Henry Hunter Hall rounding out a notably multiracial ensemble. The diversity is present but never commented upon or thematized.
The film carries a mild message about privacy and surveillance, culminating in Will's 'Now, I'm watching you' rebuke of government overreach, but it is delivered with minimal didacticism.
Faith is a pregnant biomedical researcher whose DNA work is credited with defeating the aliens, and Sandra is a NASA scientist, but these are functional plot roles rather than a feminist thesis.
The plot gestures at government surveillance overreach and corporate data harvesting, but the film is itself a wall-to-wall Amazon advertisement, undercutting any anti-capitalist reading.
No LGBTQ+ characters, relationships, or subtext appear anywhere in the film.
The film features a diverse cast but engages in no racial commentary, historical reckoning, or consciousness about race as a theme.
No environmental or climate themes are present; the threat is extraterrestrial, not ecological.
No body-positive themes or messaging regarding body image appear in the film.
No neurodivergent characters or themes are depicted or discussed.
The film is a loose modern adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel, not a revisionist retelling of historical events.
Why it received this score
There is a moment in War of the Worlds when a flash drive is delivered to Ice Cube by a Prime Air drone, carried by the Amazon employee who happens to be dating his pregnant daughter. The film treats this as a plot development. We treat it as a confession. Rich Lee's screenlife version of the H. G. Wells novel drops us inside a Department of Homeland Security surveillance program that can watch every person on Earth, then asks its analyst hero to feel uneasy about that. The aliens, when they arrive, feed on data harvested from server farms. The premise has some juice. The execution is a corporate screensaver with a licensing agreement.
The ensemble is notably multiracial, and the film never once remarks on it. Eva Longoria's NASA scientist and Iman Benson's biomedical researcher both carry genuine plot weight, the latter's DNA work credited with defeating the invasion, though neither role is built to argue a thesis. Faith is pregnant because the script needs a baby shower at the end. The film's conscience extends to a soft worry about privacy and government overreach, voiced in Will's closing rebuke to the Secretary of Defense: now, I'm watching you. He declines a new surveillance post on principle, then leaves for the party. The sermonizing is kept to a minimum. So is everything else.
Reviews have been savage, and the film now sits among the worst ever assembled, with the product placement drawing the sharpest knives. The producer's retort, that three weeks atop the Amazon charts beats a good review, carries a certain honesty. Here is a movie that wants credit for warning us about surveillance while functioning as the most efficient delivery vehicle Amazon has ever built. It is not preachy. It is not much of anything. The machines harvest our data. The film sells us a drone.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Part of
Synopsis
Will Radford is a top analyst for Homeland Security who tracks potential threats through a mass surveillance program, until one day an attack by an unknown entity leads him to question whether the government is hiding something from him... and from the rest of the world.
Questions about War of the Worlds
Is War of the Worlds woke?
No — War of the Worlds is not especially woke, scoring 25 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Based.
Does War of the Worlds have any woke elements?
1 of the 10 markers register at 30 or above, led by Representation Casting (45). On Representation Casting: Ice Cube headlines as a Black DHS analyst, with Eva Longoria, Iman Benson, and Henry Hunter Hall rounding out a notably multiracial ensemble.
How does War of the Worlds compare to other 2025 movies?
It ranks #82 of the 217 films from 2025 we've scored; their average is 26. The wokest is STRAW (92).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.