H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds is a punchline now, and it's Amazon's fault. At time of writing, the newest adaptation of The War of the Worlds is a "screenlife" movie from 2025 that’s a frontrunner for the worst film of the 21st century.

War of the Worlds 2025 is worth watching once, if only to marvel at how its creators consistently made the dumbest possible choices at every opportunity, up to and including its metamorphosis into an ad for Amazon drone delivery in its final act. Even so, it isn't bad in the right way to be funny. It's bad in the way that makes you want to comb through it looking for the black box. You want to know why this happened, so the appropriate authorities can stop it from happening again.

That probably means it's going to be a while before we see another adaptation of The War of the Worlds. It'll take time for the Amazon stink to wear off. For now, that means the long history of War of the Worlds has a strange capstone on it.

Wells' 1898 novel isn't the first alien invasion story in the Western canon, but it's often credited with cementing the concept in the popular imagination. Naturally, that's led to multiple adaptations in the 128 years since it was published, with creators from Orson Welles to Steven Spielberg to the Asylum all taking their own swings at the material. The most famous version of The War of the Worlds is still likely Welles' 1938 radio play, which triggered a panic on its first broadcast by accidentally convincing some listeners that it was a live news program.

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