Things to Come (1936)
Directed by William Cameron Menzies

Film Review

In 1933, the renowned English writer H.G. Wells published a book entitled The Shape of Things to Come in which he made some startling predictions about the future of mankind. Although dismayed by the prospect of another unavoidable world war, Wells had an unshaken belief that ultimately science would redeem mankind, effectively replacing religion, politics and personal self-interest as the supreme guiding force.  Science would determine the future destiny of mankind and lead to the creation of a "World State", Wells' concept of a unified socialist empire run by men of intelligence and learning for the betterment of all.

The Shape of Things to Come doesn't get everything right (planet Earth is still, alas, governed by self-serving idiots who like playing soldiers) but it is remarkable how accurate some of Wells' predictions were.  His estimate for the start of WWII was out by one year, and his foretelling of the devastation wrought by that conflict is chillingly prescient.   More interesting is the author's  prediction that science would grow to dominate mankind's affairs.  When he wrote the book, Wells saw this as a good thing.  A decade later, he would have second thoughts.   By the time of his death in 1946, Wells had persuaded himself that humanity was heading for extinction - a consequence of man's psychological development not keeping up with his intellectual progress.  Instead of Utopia, mankind appeared to be destined for obliteration, beneath the mushroom clouds of a global atomic firework display.

In Things to Come, we see Wells' most optimistic vision of mankind's future - his film adaptation of his book, with ideas taken from some of his other future-gazing writings (of which there were many).   A few years earlier, Wells had seen Fritz Lang's silent film Metropolis (1927) and was appalled by its apparent naivety and sentimentality.  The thing that most offended Wells was that the film made no serious attempt to construct a logical or plausible account of the future - Lang's vision was a woolly romantic fantasy, not scientifically-based conjecture.  Things to Come was effectively Wells' attempt to counter the perceived failings of Metropolis, where he used his uncanny knack of extrapolating from the present to the future to paint a credible picture of how things may be over the next few hundred years.

Like Metropolis, Things to Come offers a visually striking representation of the future - vast art deco cityscapes populated by untold numbers of perfect, toga-wearing humans, with monolithic machines in abundance, allowing civilisation to grow and prosper at an ever increasing rate.  However, Wells is not merely concerned with speculating on what the future may look like - he wants to show the trajectory by which man may get there from where he is now.

First, the film shows the world as we know it being ravaged by war.   We then see the aftermath of the war - a return to the Dark Ages, a time of scavenging, plague and disgustingly bad hairdos.  Next, the film shows the rebirth of civilisation - from a small community of wise men in Basra, Iraq (the site of one of the earliest known civilisations, now known to us all for other reasons, an emblem of human folly at its most abject).   It is then Science that takes possession of mankind, nurturing him and allowing him to achieve the potential that Nature has invested in him.  The film ends with a question mark - does man ever turn his back on progress and live purely to satisfy his animal needs, or does he go on making bold strides in knowledge and technology to satisfy an insatiable hunger for understanding....?

Whilst it doesn't attain the cohesion and artistic brilliance of Lang's Metropolis , Things to Come is a sincere and inspired attempt at predicting mankind's future, a film which deserves to be considered one of the most important examples of science-fiction in British cinema.  Admittedly, there are one or two flaws - some of the dialogue is laughably stilted, few of the characters have any real depth, and the middle-section (depicting mankind's decline into barbarism) feels aimless and unconvincing, looking like a B movie that ran out of money half-way through filming.  However, irksome as these deficiencies are, they are made up for by  some truly stunning visionary sequences - the outbreak of the world war at the start of the film (including a horribly prophetic depiction of a London laid waste by airborne bombers - with some shots that  closely resemble real footage of the Blitz) and the rapid rebirth of civilisation in the final third of the film, both using model shots and montage to great effect.

Although H.G. Wells contributed to the screenplay of Things to Come, his influence on the end product was diminished thanks to a series of drastic cuts that reduced the runtime of the film by around forty minutes. The author's anxieties and hopes do emerge clearly, however, even in this truncated form.   Things to Come is a daring vision of the future - and it's surprising how much of what Wells predicted has come about.  Science has taken control of mankind's destiny and governs virtually every aspect of our lives, enabling technological advances that would have amazed even Wells.  Whether we achieve the kind of golden Utopia the writer envisaged in the mid 1930s or end up destroying everything as result of our inability to manage this unleashed science remains to be seen.  Much is yet to come...

Film Synopsis

During Christmas 1940, the world is engulfed by a devastating global conflict.  The war lasts three decades and reduces human civilisation to rubble.  By 1970, the remnants of mankind live in feudal communities, as in the Middle Ages, hungry and fearful of a terrible plague.  But there is hope.  In Iraq, a group of engineers and scientists have come together to rebuild civilisation.  Their knowledge gives them power, the power to take control of humanity and guide it towards a more purposeful end.  For the first time, mankind has a chance of attaining what is has always dreamed of: Utopia...