Ice Cube’s sketchy history with sci-fi goes back way further than ‘War of the Worlds’
Ice Cube’s latest film, War of the Worlds, has been making waves in the news – and not the good kind. On Thursday, it was announced that the science fiction film had entered the exclusive club of only 44 films in history that have scored zero per cent on Rotten Tomatoes.
It’s a damning indictment of what had the potential to be an excellent movie. War of the Worlds was made using awful screen footage during the pandemic in 2020 by the director Timur Bekmambetov – known for his innovative use of the screen format in films like Unfriended, Missing and Searching.
But the film was shelved for five years, growing dusty and outdated, until it was revived by some miracle by Amazon Prime this year and released on their streaming platform in July. Film critics and audiences alike have since roasted it.
The film features Ice Cube as Will Radford, a Department of Homeland Security official who monitors an array of feeds for terrorist threats during the graveyard shift but is more focused on stalking his pregnant daughter and gaming son than an imminent alien attack, and is an adaptation of English author H.G. Wells’ 1890s science fiction novel of the same name.
Wells’ now heavily adapted novel was most successfully brought to life 20 years ago in Steven Spielberg’s 2005 adaptation, which was released following the events of 9/11 and captured an era of global anxiety through a 90s disaster movie lens. Starring Tom Cruise, Spielberg’s addition was an instant hit, and its reputation has only grown stronger since, which makes it all the more awkward that Ice Cube’s addition tanked so hard.
But the NWA rapper-turned-actor seems unperturbed, perhaps because it’s not the first time he’s dabbled in questionable science fiction movies. In an archival interview with Hustler Magazine from 2010, the actor admitted his regret about starring in the 2001 film, Ghost of Mars.
Directed by horror master John Carpenter (Halloween, 1978, Escape From New York, 1981), it follows a squad of police officers and a convicted criminal living on Mars in the 22nd century, who fight against the residents of a mining colony who have been possessed by the ghosts of the planet’s original inhabitants. Ice Cube stars alongside Jason Statham, Pam Grier and Natasha Henstridge. Ghost of Mars bombed in the box office but has since been afforded cult status as an addition to the Weird Western canon.
Ice Cube told Hustler he only did the movie because it was directed by John Carpenter, whom he was a big fan of, and that he actually didn’t even like the movie. “They really didn’t have the money to pull the special effects off. It was a movie that should have been done in 1979,” he told the magazine.
It’s clear the science fiction genre isn’t where Ice Cube thrives, but the actor has starred in some great movies, from the iconic 1995 buddy comedy, Friday, which Ice Cube wrote and produced, and which he says is his one of the films he’s most proud of, to Ice Cube’s earliest film, the 1991 film, Boyz N the Hood and 1999 war action movie Three Kings, which he stars in alongside George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg.
