Spookily prescient in many of its ideas, this is fascinating whilst being a little clumsy and dated, even for its time.
Comment
05/14/07
Things to Come (1936)
95 %
Reviews Counted: 20 Fresh: 19 Rotten:1 Average Rating: 7.5/10
Consensus:
Eerily prescient in its presentation of a dystopian future, Things to Come's special effects may be somewhat dated, but its potent ideas haven't aged at all.
Runtime: 1 hr 40 mins
Synopsis: In the years since they were published, H.G. Wells's words seem to have become prophecies... Society in 2036 has devolved into a leisure-saturated body of mass consumers. Important decisions are relegated to an elite few. World wars have left parts of the globe in ashes; localized... [More]
Genre: Science-Fiction/Fantasy
Starring: Raymond Massey, Ralph Richardson, Cedric Hardwicke, Ann Todd, Margaretta Scott
Director: William Cameron Menzies
Screenwriter: H.G. Wells
Producer: Alexander Korda
Composer: Arthur Bliss
Screenwriter: H.G. Wells
Producer: Alexander Korda
Composer: Arthur Bliss
Reviews
1 - 20 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
Top Critic Top Critic
At once dated and weirdly modern, this may not be the film Wells wanted it to be, but it's still more ambitious and impressive than most fantasy cinema of the past 30 years.
05/24/03
Top Critic
Things to Come is an unusual picture, a fantasy, if you will, with overtones of the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon comic strips. But it is, as well, a picture with ideas which have been expressed dramatically and with visual fascination.
05/31/07
Top Critic Top Critic
This is England's first $1 million picture. It's an impressive but dull exposition of a bad dream.
05/31/07
Top Critic
Wells' heart must have sunk as audiences avoided his impassioned and idealistic -- yet dour and didactic -- cri de coeur.
04/06/06
An astonishing black-and-white visualization of Wells' view of the future.
05/13/05
Wells wrote the screenplay, so look to this for the clearest distillation of his philosophy on film.
08/04/02
[An] imaginative, only occasionally naive forecast of the age of nuclear warfare in 1936.
01/01/00
1 - 20 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
IGN RSS Feeds