Things To Come
Things To Come (1936)
Image From IMDB
What kind of asshole starts a World War on Christmas Day, and then blows up a cinema! Who does that? (If you’ve seen the movie you’ll know that question isn’t rhetorical)
When Great Britain enters a Second World War (correctly predicted by the film makers to almost the exact yet) against an unnamed force (even though it’s obvious who) the world plummets into seemingly everlasting disaster. As the war rages for over twenty years a new chemical weapon threatens life as we know it (think zombies, without the brain eating) and all appears lost. But, out of the ashes of war and terror a new movement grows, intent on creating peace through progress and technology.
Things To Come is a wildly ambitious movie. The biggest movie of its kind produced in England back in the day, and every penny is on the screen. The film employs all kinds of effects and wizardry as we live through World War 2, the broken aftermaths of the 70s, and off into the distance future where they also correctly predict flat screen TV’s, Segways, automated factories, and a giant space gun… well, ok, maybe that last part is a little off, but damn it looked cool… even if i’d have to question the science. (I seriously miss speculative sci-fi where you could design any old crazy technology and not have Reddit and Youtubers rip it apart)
The World War stuff was brilliantly shot, especially the fleet of aircraft entering Britain, and Everytown looked incredible in all its incarnations throughout the ages. The model work and optical effects were groundbreaking, and the futuristic matte paintings looked awesome. It’s always incredible to see how early in cinematic history we took to amazing practical effects.
The characters throughout were somewhat secondary to the story with the film makers relying more on long montage scenes to show the progress, but Ralph Richardson was an absolute riot as the dictator of Everytown.
Seeing that the movie is from the thirties it’s not the quickest paced film, but I feel like it’s always trying something. I would have liked more of the future world after they went through so much trouble to create it, but what we did get was great as questions where asked of whether there’s such a thing as too much progress? (While I’m writing this review on my MacBook having just watched the blu-ray on my flat screen TV, i’m still answering yes.)
Things To Come would, in my opinion, have to be considered a classic Sci-fi. It’s written by H.G Wells, based on his book The Shape of Things To Come, and was a huge production at the time costing a reported one million dollars. It was the UK’s first big sci-fi, and William Cameron Menzies (Who went on to do Invaders of Mars, a personal favourite) done a brilliant job.
As mentioned, maybe it could have aged a little too much for some people seeing as its getting closer to being a hundred years old, but any fans of the history of the genre should definitely check it out, and hopefully you’ll really enjoy the scope and scale of this ambitious film.
