Customer Reviews
SCI-FI 
2008-07-21
AN WELL MADE FILM WITH HOPES FOR THE FUTURE. DON'T BE FOOLED BY THE COVER...IT IS NOT A COLORIZED COPY OF THE FILM.
One of sci-fi's most underrated movies. 
2008-06-30
It's a great movie and like the best sci-fi it has a solid story to complement the special effects, it's a prophetic story even anticipating WWII, and giving a social critique about man's relationship with technology and where ourfuture might lead us, solid acting, good story, but bear in mind that it's from an era before CGI and in the infancy of big budgets and special effects.
THINGS TO COME (Colorized) - Definitely worth the price 
2008-06-17
First of all, I just wish to clear the air for those fans who may be sitting on the edge wondering if they should buy another poor copy of THINGS TO COME, a wonderful but extremely dated film. This DVD transfer is about the best I have watched since I started collecting copies of this old movie.
All my prior VHS and DVD copies were made from terribly degraded originals and could barely be watched without feeling like you weren't forcing the situation. This DVD is far from perfect, but may possibly represent the best they can now do, and is worth the price in any case. I really don't know the business of digital enhancement, however, I suspect a more meticulous job of making the transfer might improve the DVD only slightly, after all these years of wear and tear on the film.
Viewers interested in the preservation of the original B&W film will be happy to read that an enhanced B&W copy has been included on the DVD. As a test, you might wish to turn down the color setting to "zero" and screen the color version in B&W and see if you can tell the difference between the two.
For the record, when I first saw this movie as a child I was mesmerized by the story and its message and would have given the film five stars. Now, with more mature taste for sci-fi and after the jading of senior citizenship, I would only rate it at three stars. By today's standards the script (which sounds very idealistic and elitist) could use some major rewriting. Also, this film's special effects would benefit immensely from today's precision modeling and CGI effects. Then again, it would no longer be the THINGS TO COME we all love.
I must confess, I have never read the HG Well's book to compare the script to, and it may also contain narratives I consider "elitist". This is especially true when an alliance of engineers, technicians and aviators believe their skills and common sense can be used to govern the world. I only believed in technocracy when I was a small child.
If I may just comment on the special effects used to represent the march of technology and creation of a new age; this series of images was very impressive in the early 50's when I first watched them. It is interesting to see how a socialistic-technocracy could lead to the same Earth raping that we now credit only capitalism with. It was, however, nice to watch the unbridled march of technology without a green peace movement. Oh yes, they did have that anti-technology movement at the end of the film when their spokesman said attempting to stop the first lunar flight, "We shall hate you more if you succeed than if you fail". I bet NASA can relate to that statement which predicted that no good accomplishment will go unpunished.
It is also amazing to me how the imagined technologies of the future shown by this film were outstripped by actual inventions and innovations in (at least) the following fields: aviation, space, medicine, manufacturing, mining, tunneling, electronics, computers, the world wide web, communications, TV, radio, and robotics (not to mention nano-technology). We now watch more impressive real world machines on nightly news and TV episodes of Modern Marvels.
I no longer understand what Raymond Massey was raving about during the last two minutes of the film. Somehow his words drove me to tears when I was a boy of about eight, back when I thought I understood what he was gibbering about.
Predictions of the future 2008-03-19
It is hard to believe that the film was created so long ago. Although audiences back then laughed at the large screen televisions and the wrist comunicators, it was an accurate prediction of today. It also depicts that nothing really changes, the same people fight to stop other people from doing what they believe is right. They had the same "DO GOODERS" back then.
There sure is a future for Wells, but what a future ! 
2008-01-30
H.G. Wells in 1936 was past his prime and the books of his that will survive were long gone by. He was coming to the end of his life and he was confronted to his dream gone sour. At the very beginning of the 20th century he defended the idea that the world was doomed because the evolution of species, natural biology, on one side, and Marxism, market economy on the other side, were necessarily leading to the victory of the weaker over the stronger due to the simple criterion of number. The weaker were the mass of humanity and the stronger were the minority elite. He defended then a strict eugenic policy with the elimination of all those who were in a way or another weakening the human race. First of all the non-Caucasian, with the only exception of the Jews who would disappear thanks to mixed marriages. Then, within the Caucasian community all those who were not healthy, the alcoholics, the mentally disabled, all those who were genetically disabled, etc. That was not Hitler. That was H.G. Wells and that was not after the first world war. That was more than ten years before. And twenty years before the first world war he had published The Time Machine that defended the idea that the human "race", left to its own means and due to the vaster cosmological evolution of life on earth, would see the differentiation of the human "race" into two "species": the working class would become a subterranean laborious species and the bourgeoisie would become an idle surface species. The point was in the novel that the surface sophisticated and weak idle species was the prey of the other species who were the predators. Wells was convinced humanity was in danger and politicians were supposed to stop this evolution by imposing a strict eugenic policy. The first countries to follow this injunction were the Scandinavian countries who were also the last to drop it only very recently for some of them. The film here proposes a vision of 2036 with a world government that is absolutely dictatorial in the fact that there is no election, no parliament, no really democratic institution, only peace imposed by military conquest, and the government is dominated by one man or at the most one man and his few councilors. And in that future world all, absolutely all human beings are Caucasians. Wells was able to imagine humanity being completely white by 2036. Amazing. Wells envisaged some kind of a rebellion but that would be short lived and lead to nothing at all. The last sentences are the vision of this white civilization conquering the whole universe when contemplating the sky and its stars and planets. Frightening. And that was produced in 1936. All the more frightening since nowhere the slightest mention of Hitlerism, fascism, Japanese imperialism or Stalinism can be found. But it is essential to have that film in a good restored edition because it is crucial to have a full vision of H.G. Wells. We are obviously very far away from the Brave New World of absolute "democratic" social selection, or the Animal Farm of the dictatorship of the porcine proletariat, or the 1984 of the abstract mediatic dictatorship of Big Brother. This vision is at least just as much frightening as the three others. And I only want to compare Wells with the British science fiction writers of his days. It would be unfair to go beyond. This reveals that in England in these first three decades of the 20th century there was a tremendous fear among intellectuals: the fear that the future would only be somber, bleak and in the form of an impasse of some kind.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Does An Anti-Science Faction Seem Familiar 2008-01-03
One of the most important science fiction films of all time, H.G. Wells's "Things to Come" opens prior to World War II and takes the viewer on a hundred-year time trip to 2036 A.D. when a man and a woman are rocketed to the moon. This inspired saga predicts television, jet planes and evil dictators. Featuring fabulous sets, a rich musical score and sweeping visual grandeur, "Things to Come" is a truly spectacular film event! Features a pristine new film-to-video transfer from original source materials.
Harryhausen colorized version 2007-11-29
This is one of my favorite movies. I agree its no Star Wars but nearly everything in Star Wars, right down to the type disappearing in the distance, is lifted from Things To Come, Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers. Things To Come is long and dated but even with the sound off, its worth seeing for the set design.
This colorized version is fun but no Criterion edition. In fact, the amount of "restoration" appears to be around 0%. There is no mention of licensing as there is on the Image DVD, so I presume they got a free, public domain copy and ran it through their computer.
There is a short segment with some lofty talk about how realistic colorization has become. While that is (obviously) false, there is something about this movie that lends itself to the "hand tinted" look of colorization. There are vivid blue skies, pale brown and pale blue clothes and copper skin tones. And a bit of black and white they just skipped, I guess. Nothing terribly realistic but still, very pretty!
Two things worth mentioning . They managed to pull a little more out of the shadows than on the Image DVD so the early night scenes are easier to see. And there are some vintage, 1950s space toy ads, also very-unrestored, that are fun.
So the best version is still from Image but if you're a big enough fan, you might want this one as well. Of course, avoid anything from Madacy as nothing from them is any good. I have to wonder what Things To Come would look like if Kino Video gave it the restoration they gave Metropolis....
I'd give it another star if they were honest about what they had and had not done.
BREAKING NEWS (2008): The U.K.'s Granada Ventures (Network DVD) has released a restored, digitally remastered version of Things To Come that's...restored and digitally remastered (seriously!) Its a 2-disc set with missing scenes, commentary, stills, a 23-page booklet, etc. Available from Amazon UK but be advised you'll need a player that can convert PAL to NTSC and play Region 2 discs. By far, the best available version of this film.
Old, but must see. 2007-10-13
Things to come by H. G. Wells is a very prophetic movie for the time it was written. I enjoyed it when I first saw it in the early 1940's and it's still a good one.
Things to Come - In Color 2007-10-05
The classic Things to Come has appeared many times, usually with poor picture quality, with running time less than the nominal 100 minutes. This version has been restored well, with few picture flaws, and contains both black-and-white and colorized versions. Some minor cuts remain, so running time is just short of 92 minutes. Thoroughly enjoyable, with a good commentary track by Ray Harryhausen.
"Things to Come" a sci-fi classic fully restored in B&W and color 2007-09-24
An excellent DVD edition of "Things to Come"--the only (and best) restoration and commendable colorization of this classic science fiction film, the only one visualized and scripted by H.G. Wells (based on his novel "The Shape of Things to Come"). Both restored black and white and color versions are on this disk. The colorizing, directed by filmmaker and animator Ray Harryhausen, is well worth seeing. A nice special feature includes an interview with Harryhausen and the colorizing process--it has come a long way since the 1980s. Please note that director William Cameron Menzies dreamed about making the film in color; based on notes and period materials, the film, in a strange way, realizes the director's 1930s pre-color dreams. It is a film that imagines life in the late 1900s and early 2000s. While it has a naive pacifist "anti=war" theme and prefigures the dangerous modern left-wing dreams of America and Europe, it is at its heart anithetical to traditional American ideals of individual freedom and republicanism. Wells was, in the end, a misguided man who believed in outmoded ideas such as world government or United Nations-type institutions such as the League of Nations; incredible to think people still advocate for world government believing, like children, that it could come close to solving genuine problems and stop war. Wells never conceived of today's Third-World thug leaders hiding under the skirt of the toothless United Nations. But even with that said, this is a must DVD for any film collector.
