The 2026 Razzie Awards have spoken, and for once, they actually got it right. The latest War of the Worlds adaptation swept the ceremony with five dishonors including Worst Picture, while Ice Cube took home Worst Actor.

Let me be clear: I don't usually put much stock in the Razzies. They tend to pick easy targets—critically panned blockbusters, over-the-top performances, anything with Adam Sandler in it (though as we'll discuss later, Sandler is having the last laugh). The Razzies often feel less like legitimate criticism and more like film nerds dunking on popular culture.

But this War of the Worlds remake? It earned every single golden raspberry. This wasn't just a bad movie—it was a masterclass in how not to adapt classic science fiction. Take H.G. Wells' timeless tale of alien invasion and human resilience, drain it of all subtext and nuance, add some incomprehensible CGI, and you get... well, you get five Razzies.

Ice Cube winning Worst Actor is particularly unfortunate because he's proven himself as a performer over the years. But in War of the Worlds, he seemed to be acting in a completely different movie than everyone else—and that movie was also bad. It was a performance so wooden you could build furniture with it.

What makes this adaptation so egregiously terrible is that War of the Worlds should be easy to get right. The story is literally about humanity coming together in the face of existential threat. It's timeless. Steven Spielberg made a perfectly serviceable version in 2005. But this remake somehow managed to strip away everything that makes the story compelling and replace it with... what, exactly? Generic disaster movie tropes and dialogue that sounds like it was written by an AI that learned English from Michael Bay movies?

The Razzies also honored the film's screenplay, directing, and supporting performances. It was a clean sweep, which is almost impressive in its own way. You have to work hard to make something this uniformly terrible.

Here's the thing about the Razzies, though: they rarely have lasting impact. The Oscars can make careers; the Razzies just provide a day of headlines. Ice Cube will be fine. The producers will move on to ruin some other classic property.