The Director Behind Ice Cube's War Of The Worlds Made A Cringe-Worthy Marvel Music Video

2025's "War of the Worlds" has become a hit on Prime Video after debuting on July 30 and shooting straight to the top of the streamer's charts. Why? I don't know. But that's what happened and now we're in the position of having to parse this critically-panned sci-fi rehash to figure out what in the heck is going on.

You might think I'm being a tad harsh. After all, this movie did dominate the Prime Video charts. But wait until you hear about the actual content of this film, which takes place entirely on Ice Cube's desktop. That is, much like 2018's "Searching," which also unfolded entirely on computer screens, "War of the Worlds" is confined to the laptop of Mr. Cube's Homeland Security analyst Will Radford, who witnesses the invasion of Earth by alien creatures entirely via low-res videos and a network of surveillance cameras. This might sound like an interesting approach, and it certainly worked for the aforementioned "Searching." But this film was shot during the global pandemic, which means that rather than being a bold stylistic choice, the desktop setting is all down to the fact that nobody could actually shoot a proper movie at the time.

But the worst part of "War of the Worlds" is that it's actually a surreptitious ad for Amazon itself, the same company hosting this movie on its servers — and when I say "surreptitious" I mean "unashamedly overt." In the movie, Ice Cube and friends actually save the day by placing an order on the website itself, a process we see play out in detail as if we're watching a how-to guide on Amazon shopping. The idea to place this order comes from a character who drives an Amazon Prime delivery truck, and at one point an unhoused man is rewarded for his efforts in saving the planet with a $1,000 Amazon gift card, sent directly via text.

Who could possibly be responsible for such a wretched product? The man responsible for one of the most cringe-worthy music videos you'll ever see.

"War of the Worlds" is directed by, well, Amazon apparently. But the name in the credits is Rich Lee. Though he's previously directed a couple of TV episodes, including an installment of Netflix's "The Society," Lee has mostly worked in commercials and music videos, overseeing visuals for the likes of Lana Del Rey, Maroon 5, and Eminem. Or should I say "Veminem." No, actually, nobody should ever say that unless they're a genuine fan of the rapper's 2018 music video for his song "Venom."

The track was written to accompany the release of Sony's Tom Hardy-led Marvel movie of the same name (which kicked off a trilogy that ended with 2024's "Venom: The Last Dance") and is standard late-career Eminem. That basically means there's plenty of shouting and flurries of syllables strung together in clever but cloying fashion. Despite the dizzying number of words the rapper actually says, he doesn't actually manage to say a whole lot in the song — though if you're a fan of Marshall Mathers' wordcraft you might have gotten something out of it. What you almost certainly won't get much out of (beyond a good chuckle) is the accompanying music video, which also arrived in 2018 courtesy of Mr. Lee.

Look, there have been some great directors that made the transition from commercials to film, David Fincher and Ridley Scott being just two examples. However, Scott's first movie was the critically celebrated (if commercially unsuccessful) "The Duelists," and Fincher's was "Alien 3," which despite all that went wrong with the film is still a heck of a lot better than Ice Cube's extended Amazon commercial. What might we glean from the "Venom" music to elucidate our understanding of how such a film got made? Not much, really, as the Eminem visual was really just sort of laughable while "War of the Worlds" and its unabashed Amazon shilling comes off as much more insidious and cynical.

The "Venom" movies aren't the most serious comic book adaptations you'll ever see, and that's fine because not every superhero flick needs to be "The Dark Knight." From the moment Tom Hardy decided to do one of his weird voices for his performance as Eddie Brock/Venom, the films were never going to be serious works of art, anyway. But at least you got the sense the "Venom" movies knew what they were. Rich Lee's "Venom" video doesn't seem to have much of a sentiment, or even a comprehensible concept.

In the video, which apparently picks up where the "Fall" music video left off, a man finds a crushed "Revival" CD which unleashes what appears to be a rap equivalent of the Venom symbiote. Shots of Eminem prancing around a dark room are then interspersed with footage of various people becoming possessed by the spirit of the rapper. Throughout the "Venom" music video, we see everyone from a little kid to a kindly old man and even a dog take on the persona of Slim Shady as the symbiote is transferred from host to host. The self-serious delivery of the rapping is immediately undercut by images of a little boy and an old man with full-on Eminem bobble heads, in a music video that just doesn't work for anyone beyond the rapper's most devoted fans. By the end, Eminem himself turns into Venom, which only makes things even more confusing. Was the it an Eminem symbiote or the actual Venom symbiote? I'm not even sure Eminem or Lee knows.

So, with "War of the Worlds" Lee can now claim to have worked with two formerly great rappers whose recent output has sullied their legacy somewhat. Hopefully the director can break out of that habit going forward, but with the Ice Cube movie topping Prime Video charts, he doesn't really have any reason to.