Review for Things to Come

Introduction

Think of H.G. Wells and cinema, and invariably it's War of the Worlds that springs to mind. The classic confrontation between lowly man and superior alien has been made several times, and not only the 1953 George Pal version and the recent Spielberg effort. The alien invasion storyline is regularly revisited in films like Independence Day, Mars Attacks, and even Evolution. It's easy to forget that H.G Wells had a more direct influence in cinema. I always think of him as a writer from the Victorian age, but the fact of the matter is that he lived until 1946, and his media presence was viral in a way that modern netizens can only dream of. In 1935, he adapted his own The Shape of Things To Come for cinema. He wrote the screenplay for Things to Come, and Britain had its own mega fantastic sci-fi epic, where Fritz Lang had given Germany Metropolis. Network now bring this sci-fi classic to Blu-ray, giving it the high definition, special edition treatment. They will release Things To Come in a two disc collection, but I only received the Blu-ray feature disc for review.


1940, Everytown, and the citizens are settling down to a peaceful and joyous Christmas, hopefully heralding another year of reconstruction following the Great War. But trouble looms ahead, as war stirs again on the horizon. It also stirs a debate between friends Cabal, Harding and Passworthy, as their families gather for the Yuletide celebrations. That debate ends when the air raid sirens sound and war is declared. The conflict that ensues encircles the globe, and puts all prior conflicts into the shade. It's an epic struggle that lasts decades, and leaves nothing but devastation and pestilence in its path, the few survivors left to piece together a neo-feudal existence under the rule of petty warlords.


It seems the future of mankind is bleak, but there remains among a few people the vision, the scope to rebuild humanity, to once and for all put aside the petty squabbles of yesteryear, and to create a utopian society free of want, of disease, and of malice, and with the will to reach for the stars.

The Disc

Things to Come gets a 1.37:1 pillarboxed monochrome transfer at 1080p resolution. The transfer itself seems to an unproblematic recreation of the original film elements. It's just that the original film hasn't seen much in the way of restoration for this disc, with the image a little faded and murky at times, prone to flicker, and afflicted by print damage and scratches. There's also a worrying yellow staining that occasionally appears in certain scenes. Thankfully the print damage is never extensive enough to mar the image, but considering the restoration that has been given to similar films of the period by other distributors, Things to Come is something of a missed opportunity. The audio is a simple LPCM 2.0 English mono track, with optional subtitles in a yellow font. The audio comes across a little worse off than the image, as it sounds muffled, hollow, and scratched, with dialogue on occasion vanishing beneath the damage to the track.

Extras

This is a two disc collection, but having only the Blu-ray disc to review, I can't confirm the existence of the Virtual Extended Edition, the On Reflection Brian Aldiss documentary, the Ralph Richardson Interview, the Wandering Sickness 78 rpm recording, the script PDF, or the booklet insert.


What the Blu-ray does have is the US re-release trailer presented in SD resolution, the Image and Merchandise galleries presented in HD (pretty comprehensive slideshows at that), and the audio commentary from Nick Cooper. It's a little gappy, can be a tad repetitive, but he does know his stuff about the film, points out what is missing, and what has been restored, and fills in the general history of the film.

Conclusion

I've never had a reason to question the efficacy of a Blu-ray upgrade until now. While Things to Come certainly looks as good as it probably can on Blu-ray, and there is a benefit to seeing it at the correct frame rate. There's only so much that a high definition presentation can do with a less than stellar print, and low quality audio. I can't imagine the film coming across substantially worse off on DVD. It's a shame, as were it given the same restoration treatment as Metropolis, or the Ruggles of Red Gap Blu-ray that I recently reviewed, then it would have the presentation worthy of a genuine classic of sci-fi cinema.


I can't tell you how many times I watched Things to Come as I was growing up. Most of the decent sci-fi cinema on television back then did indeed date from the fifties and sixties, and the likes of Star Wars and Blade Runner were yet to hit the small screen. There's only so much monster movie sci-fi that a child can take, or really be allowed to watch by over-protective parents. But thought provoking, intelligent science fiction was rare, and thus it was that Things to Come got a viewing whenever it was scheduled on television.


It's been a few decades since I saw it last though, and watching it with adult eyes delivers a wholly different experience. It's still an epic cinematic experience, more so now having seen it on a large screen television, and you can see how it is the British answer to Fritz Lang's Metropolis. It has the same scope, the vision, the epic sets, the massive cast, and the visual spectacle that awes and inspires. It also blends elements of past and future to create its vision, although where Metropolis called on Art Deco and Biblical references, Things to Come calls on ancient Greek and Roman styles to inform its prognostications. Although there is a sense of irony in that as noted in the Image Gallery, H.G. Wells specifically wanted this film to be anything but Metropolis.


Things to Come was Wells' vision of the next hundred years, and it's amazingly accurate in its soothsaying. However, I have read on sci-fi visions of the future, that predicting the next ten years is easy, as it will be little changed from today, predicting a hundred years ahead you can get away with saying any old thing, but for forty years, you have to bear in mind that while technology and society may be completely different, the people you're writing about will be alive today, which makes it a difficult endeavour indeed. Wells gets around this difficulty by creating a post-war societal collapse into a neo-mediaeval state, which is less futuristic than it is historic.


I don't know how inevitable war seemed in 1935, but Wells predictions of WWII are a little uncanny. He's off by a year, starting it in 1940, there's a throwaway mention of heavy destruction to a naval fleet at the start of the attack, presaging Pearl Harbour, and both sides do their fighting at a distance, with air raids, two years before the real thing was demonstrated at Guernica. The only 'mistake' is the expectation that gas would be the weapon of choice, although that's a mistake that was made by the government later on, as gas masks were standard issue for civilians in British cities and towns. He also had the post war utopian society investing in scientific progress and aiming for the moon, although it took mankind a mere 34 years to walk on Earth's nearest neighbour, not the 105 guesstimated in Things to Come. Having said that, we haven't been back since 1972, and at the rate NASA is working, we may not actually go back before 2040 anyway.


The war and the future aside, the most interesting period dramatically in Things to Come, is the post war decline, with the collapse of civilisation, begun by war and accelerated by pestilence, into small feudal states run by petty warlords. We have a society here torn between restoration and decline, with the inhabitants salvaging a working civilisation from the remains of the past, and a select few individuals aspiring to reach the peaks of past technological advance, but held back by violent power mongers that live for the glory of minor gains from petty wars. Unfortunately, the characterisations here are weak, particularly that of the Boss played by Ralph Richardson, who comes across as ranting and infantile.


I have to say that as a whole, Things to Come hasn't held up as well as its rival Metropolis. It just isn't as relevant or as meaningful to a modern age, and not because most of its prognostications have already come to pass in some form or another. Metropolis has a timelessness about its tale, and an ability to appeal on more than one level. It also has in its story of championing the individual against the relentless advance of the machine, something of an anti-totalitarian bent.


Wells' vision of the future is born from a very Imperialistic viewpoint. This is the future as envisaged by the British Empire, which may begin with an antiwar polemic, and an unsubtle dig at the growing power of Hitler and the fascists, but its solution is no less totalitarian in its own right, with the Wings over the World group practicing blitzkrieg of a sort in the way it establishes its empire through force, utilising a 'tame' version of the same weapons that wreaked havoc in the previous war. The scientists do this because they 'know' they are right, and any petty dictator or warlord who holds onto delusions of independence or sovereignty will fall beneath the wheels of progress.


And so begins the era of science, where the Earth is there merely as a resource pool to be plundered and pillaged for the sake of advancement, where no opposing opinion will be countenanced or even considered, where humanity must ever progress, no matter how many individuals are sacrificed in the process. The nationalistic politics of the era separate Metropolis and Things to Come, but I can see the latter film far more up the alley of Hitler and Stalin than the subversive former.


I may have loved Things to Come as a child starved of sci-fi back in the seventies, but looking at it with older eyes I can't help but see the flaws. It's more obviously a polemic than it is a narrative, and its message doesn't hold in a world that has long since realised the futility of its optimistic vision of endless progress and imperialistic utopia.