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I replaced this:
Wells predicts a second world war around 1940, originating from a German-Polish dispute. After 1945 there would be an increasing lack of public safety in "criminally infected" areas. The plan for the "Modern World State" would succeed on its third attempt, and come out of something that occurred in Basra, Iraq. The book also states: "Although world government had been plainly coming for some years, although it had been endlessly feared and murmured against, it found no opposition anywhere."
with a complete stub, because the above seems to have been copied from a website; could be any one of [1] [2] [3] or several others. --Camembert
Anyone want to clarify better what Douhet's relationship to the film might have been? I like 80.177.108.194's addition that
But that sounded almost like a suggestion that Wells had based his ideas on Douhet. I added a sentence to make it clear that Wells certainly had not gotten all of his ideas about air war from Douhet.
But was there a connection? I know nothing about this myself and can't comment intelligently.
Wells was a well-informed man so by the time he wrote the screenplay he might well have known about Douhet (or Billy Mitchell for that matter), and discussions of air war and its consequences could well have been "in the air." Aircraft manufacturers were building warplanes, and by the time the film was in preparation Mussolini's air force would already have been conducting attacks on Ethiopia.
I guess what I'm wondering about is, did Wells get some ideas from Douhet? Did the people engaged in the production naturally turn to Douhet's book for research on what air war might be like?
Or was it more like people watched the film and said, after the fact, "Oh, yes, that's what Douhet was talking about?"
There probably isn't any good answer to this... Dpbsmith 12:31, 30 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Wells would have almost certainly been aware of Stanley Baldwin's 1932 statement that "the Bomber will always get through". Douhet was just one of several prominent prophets of air power, alongside Mitchell (and certainly the most well-known in Europe) and was part of a general movement that was trying to make the world aware of the offensive potential of air power. I will suggest removing the Douhet reference but leaving the link to strategic bombing in the text. The movie is a document of popular belief in the potency of bombing and a reminder that it was thought to be as apocalyptic a threat as nuclear war is to us today. Prune 15:01, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I don't see why the Frayling remark is in 'Behind the Scenes' - it is an opinion so I am cutting it.
No problem with it up top. It just was not adding a detail about the production. Frayling showed some footage at the RCA that was a test reel for the effects done by the artist Naum Gabo. Worth an addition?
Frayling is no longer with the BFI.Piersmasterson 12:52, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
It was Moholy-Nagy not Gabo so I've fixed that. In the process I found a photo of his test effectsPiersmasterson 17:32, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
After seeing this film for the first time, I was struck by how elements bore similarities to later media. The 2036 portion is a lot like Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix as well as the backstory for the Silver Surfer and Kang the Conqueror. Is anything in print about this film's legacy?--StAkAr Karnak 15:44, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
The statement in the article that
seems pretty unconvincing to me. For one thing... it's been a while since I've watched it and I don't feel like watching it right now just to check... I don't think the phrase "World War II" is used. Is it? For another, apart from being a global war in which air power played a role, the resemblance to World War II isn't close. The gas attacks resemble World War I more closely than anything in World War II. There's no obvious political or military similarity. The war is not really presented in enough detail to judge whether it's an impressive bit of prescience or not.
Second, "it was only one year off" isn't very impressive given that the movie was released in 1936, and that fear of approaching war was hardly a unique insight.
Third, and admittedly I'm setting the bar pretty high here; for most writers, I wouldn't have said that they ought to have predicted the use of atomic bombs in World War II, but given that Wells wrote a novel about them in 1914 in his case I'd say that not having them in Things to Come is a failed prediction—if one is measuring the movie as a prediction of the actual historical World War II.
I've always perceived it as a fantasy of the way in which things could develop in some unspecified future... not an attempt at accurate short-term prediction.
Anyway, I think this sentence should go. The film did not "predict World War II" and is far less closely tied to historical reality than, say, Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:50, 14 August 2006 (UTC) Comment:The film says war starts with a surprise attack before war was declared.This is surprisingly what happened in Pearl Harbour, so right event, just not England.Ern Malleyscrub (talk) 16:18, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
I've reverted the recent "rounding" (although, technically, one would have expected 108m 40s to be rounded to 109m!) of the various running times for the film. Given the various issues around the length of the film and what has survived of it, I think it is important to be precise, and I have added references to confirm the actual timings. Nick Cooper 13:16, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 13:55, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
Seems way, way off. Why would its being a derivative work based on something not in the public domain affect anything? Weird. 208.111.241.155 (talk) 15:14, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure what counts as "digitally restored," but I bought the Legend Films DVD (with Harryhausen's name on it) and returned it. I was completely disappointed in it. I saw no evidence of anything I would call "restoration" apart from the bad colorization. It appeared to me to be no improvement at all on previous DVD or VHS releases. (I didn't check to see whether any it contained any previously cut material, though).
The DVD I saw, both in the colorized and uncolorized versions contained on the disk, had unsteady framing (as if projected in a projector with a dirty film gate or worn sprockets). It had a poor grey scale (too contrasty). It had the effect inaccurately called "flicker" often seen in bad multiple-generation copies of old films: an irregular variation in brightness on a time scale of seconds. (I've assumed, without knowing for sure, that this is the result of uneven processing, increased by film fading over time, and increase further by contrast pickup in multigeneration copying). And, like 16 mm prints, the film was watchably sharp but nowhere near as sharp as it should have been.
By contrast, I recently viewed DVDs of a 1960s black-and-white movie, "David and Lisa," which made no claims to being digitally restored... and a 1953 movie--I think a somewhat later film re-release--"Mr. Hulot's Holiday"--which also made no such claims. They were steady, sharp, had a good grey scale. If we call the Citizen Kane restoration 10, these would have been about an 8, and the Legend Films "Things to Come" would have been about a 3.
I don't believe it was "digitally restored" at all. I'd love to know how one would go about proving that one way or another.
When I saw "Things to Come" in a theatre in the late 1960s, it looked just as good as any new, clean, 35mm print of a black-and-white movie, which is to say very good. Since good prints of it were circulating in the 1960s, I don't know of any reason why a DVD transfer of it shouldn't look every bit as good as "Mr. Hulot's Holiday" or "David and Lisa." The DVD case claims that it is a transfer from "original elements" which I would assume would lead one to expect better quality than in a 1960s print. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:26, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
I believe this film deserves more discussion of its predictions of life after war is over and the post-war dark age is dispelled. The idea of Utopia has many forms and is depicted in many books, movies and even political theories. The manipulation of people is still a part of the future, visionaries are branded as extremists.The ordinary man and woman are shown to be putty in the hands of a well meaning but short sighted politician types. The world of the future is shown as an environmentally controlled super city, pre-dating "Logans Run" and many other futurist films. There are neat gizmos like a wrist communicator, no doubt inspired by Dick Tracy, or was it the other way around? Colds,indigestion and common ailments have been eliminated. The space race of the sixties is "predicted" as a pivotal point in the development of humankind. Anyone familiar with the "Star Trek" movies knows this is also a key element in that fictional future. The theme put forward is that moving into space demands that mankind moves beyond the historical limitations that have defined the species since prehistoric times. It's a huge leap that most science fiction of the twentieth century shares. This theme is so obvious that it seems to have been missed in the main article. I wouldn't think of changing the main article until this aspect has been discussed by the worthy wikipedia contributors.Things to Come is one of the pivotal films of science fiction and deserves respect. Thanks folks.Ern Malleyscrub (talk) 17:15, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
The problem with being too close to predicting the future: the powers that be ( voted by democracy - a systenm that is in direct oppostion to theocray - theocracy proposes the worth of the individual whereas democracy proposes the most convincingly equal primus (or pree-moose, cf ee-d-o-cracy movie) inter pares , anyway, if someone becomes too close to predicting the future might end up being called and denounced a cheat ) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.0.86.185 (talk) 21:07, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
Sanders undoubtedly did appear in the film, as he is listed as an extra in at least one reliable source (IIRC, it's either Kulik's biography of Korda, or Rachael Low's Film Making in 1930's Britain). He certainly doesn't play a character called "Menzes" since there isn't one in the film; the appearance of "Menzies" on filmreference.com is the name of the director, as per all the other listed films. Not sure where the claim that he plays a pilot actually originates, but widespread net proliferation may be more down to widespread copying - I'll have to check. Nick Cooper (talk) 17:10, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
I found this picture: "Speed wings over the world".
Did this statue inspire H.G. Wells?.
The first LP from the Spanish group Aviador Dro (Airmen Dro) was called "Alas sobre el mundo" (1982)[4]("Wings over the world").
It is no coincidence: Aviador Dro has (has, they are still active) a mundialist/"progressive"/socialist ideology, and "Things to Come" (retitled "Mundo futuro") was aired repeatedly on Spanish T.V. during the 1970s and 1980s. Randroide (talk) 11:06, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
There's a book on the history of Science Fiction film, published in 1977, titled "Things to Come". Its foreword states the author took his title and inspiration from this film. The last film covered in the book is "Star Wars", about which the author states no further advance in special effects is possible, advances will only be in plot and story. It wasn't long at all before the movie industry (especially Industrial Light and Magic) proved it extremely wrong on that point. I've tried to find information on the author, publisher etc, but as usual, it's very difficult to find anything on the web that predates 1992 unless it's of significant educational or historical interest, or had a site or at least some mention made by an interested individual. I may still have a copy of it... somewhere. The cover image is a still from "2001: A Space Odyssey". IIRC the title may be in the 'computer letters' style popular in the 1970's which is based on the shapes of MICR numbers. Bizzybody (talk) 11:52, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
How tedious, an attempt to ignore the MOS and the template guidelines and force in unnecessary information that is not needed in a British film. I'll open a comment at Film Project shortly to get a wider input on something as basic as this. - SchroCat (talk) 20:15, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
From WP:TPO:
"Pointles" is decidely one-sided, so I am, once again, removing it from the section title. Per Policy, please do not restore it. Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:29, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
Unless you have a reason beyond the one given in your edit summary where the number of people speaking English, there is no reason to add US centric information to what is a British film, it is not what the infobox is for. America apparently matters for ALL films because people speak English there? DId you read that summary before you clicked submit? Darkwarriorblake (talk) 23:52, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
I've moved this query from the body of the article here, where it belongs. Clarityfiend (talk) 10:00, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
"Wells originally wanted the music to be recorded in advance, and have the film constructed around the music, but this was considered too radical and so the score, by Arthur Bliss, was fitted to the film afterwards in a more conventional way."
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There has been a recent attempt to remove references to Everytown being a British/English location. I would note that not only does Cabal wear a Royal Air Force uniform, but the published treatment specifically refers to him as a "British airman" in the scene in which he engages the enemy bomber (Stover, page 130). Similarly, the enemy air fleet in the preceding sequences is described as passing over "the Dover cliffs" in the cutting script (Stover, page 202). In the narrative, Burton refers to Gordon - having escaped - "making the French coast," (Film Story, page 83). Nick Cooper (talk) 09:00, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
Ray Bradbury said that, after watching the film, he decided that he "would make the future" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6DRBURPlxI&t=2428s at 49:30). 2600:6C67:1C00:5F7E:D911:BDE0:A2FF:C03E (talk) 00:38, 14 January 2023 (UTC)