Rating: 
Summary: Buy the VHS From Englewood!
Review: I have loved "Things To Come for over twenty years and have taught it in my classes. It is slow and talky for many viewers, but it is also indisputably a great film---in fact, with "2001: A Space Odyssey" and a few others, it is that rarest of works: a genuine, serious science fiction movie.However, be warned. Most of the public domain prints out there are simply horrible, as many of the reviews on this page attest. I have viewed numerous prints of this film and had long ago given up hope of ever seeing the movie in anything resembling reasonable condition---and then came the Englewood Entertainment video, with its glorious "neon" packaging. The picture has been cleaned up a good deal, and is much less shaky and spliced than other versions;but the glory of this edition is the soundtrack. Major work has been done here, eliminating hiss and pops and rendering the dialogue easily comprehensible for the first time in my lifetime and revealing the fully rich beauty of Arthur Bliss's magnificent score. You simply have not seen "Things To Come" until you've seen the Englewood print! Perhaps someday the British will take it upon themselves to restore "Things To Come" to its full glory, with a complete 113-minute print (the Englewood is the standard 90-or-so minutes).That will be a great day for fans of science fiction film. But until then, Englewood has rendered a tremendous service to lovers of this movie. Get it. Cherish it.
Rating: 
Summary: Buy the Image Entertainment DVD
Review: I just want to reiterate the comments below that this new Image Entertainment DVD release is by far the finest version of this sci-fi classic that I've ever seen. Though not perfect, it towers above the many public domain versions that have been floating around over the years. Though occasionally a bit pompous, this memorable film is justifiably notable for its striking production design--the futuristic portion may be the part everyone remembers but the design of the post-apocalyptic Everytown by William Cameron Menzies is just as impressive. "Things To Come" is a worthy addition to one's sci-fi DVD collection.
Rating:
Summary: Don't be confused--this DVD version is the remastering!
Review: I've loved this film for decades and lived with the wretched old 16mm Blackhawke print (to tape and later to DVD) because of the outstanding film making it is. Whether you think it's preachy or passionate, the direction, art direction and performances are outstanding. Anyway, don't be confused. This is a remastering from 35mm originals found in some vault somewhere (no details offered on packaging or disc). I only gave it 4 stars instead of 5 because there's no restoration here--just remastering. Still, it's wonderful to see more detail and better contrast come through. There might even be a snippet or two that aren't in the previous version--can't be sure. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Be warned!
Review: If you cannot appreciate a good story, have no imagination, and/or are some kind of idiot, you will not like this excellent movie. Be warned!
Rating:
Summary: Be warned!
Review: If you cannot appreciate a good story, have no imagination, and/or are some kind of idiot, you will not like this excellent movie. Be warned!
Rating:
Summary: A visual feast made palatable
Review: Image Entertainment's DVD edition of H.G. Wells "Things To Come" is a welcome improvement over other home video editions. The package and marketing information state that this edition features "a new video transfer from original source materials", and so it evidently does. Yet, these words could be misleading. Image may have obtained the use of an authorized "original" studio print for this edition, and I appreciate their doing so, but this does not look like an "original" print in the usual sense.
In 1935 & '36 London Pictures spent a fortune to make "Things To Come". The movie is a sober warning of the horrors and retrograde effects of war on society. At the time of its appearance, the world still suffered under the brutal memories of the World War that ended in 1918, and at the time of the film's release, with rumblings of the rising Nazi war machine in Europe, the public was in no mood to be reminded of war's frightful prospect. Audiences shunned "Things To Come" in droves. The studio never came close to recovering the costs of the picture, and ended up abandoning it. The rights eventually fell into the public domain, and there it has languished, with numerous opportunists making duplicate prints from the existing original 16mm prints. These shoddily made prints were transfered to tape, and cheaply copied to VHS tapes that are unviewable as anything other than a poor suggestion of the film's original glory.
By abandoning the film, the studio didn't bother to preserve the negatives, and the scarce original release prints made in the 30's and the hundreds of unauthorized duplications are all that remain. Since most studio films are shot in 35mm, a 35mm print would be the closest descendent from the camera negative, and the best existing source from which to make a new negative, or a video transfer. Since most 35mm prints are destroyed when a film is withdrawn from theatrical distribution, very few, if any 35mm prints of "Things To Come" have survived to our time. It is therefore not surprising that Image Entertainment's video transfer is not from an original 35mm print. Indeed, strictly speaking, it isn't really from an original 16mm print, either.
If you duplicate an old photograph without first shooting a negative from the photo, the final printed duplicate will not look much like the original photo: it will lack contrast and range of gray scale. Yet, that is how most 16mm "duped" movie prints are made. Printing of movies is very expensive, and shooting an intermediate negative doubles the expense if only a single positive duplication is made. What's more, 16mm offers a very tiny frame from which to shoot a negative. An intermediate negative shot from a 16mm print would perhaps produce better contrast and range of gray tone, but because it is an added step in the duplication process, it further diminishes the final image resolution and adds more distortion and noise in the optical sound track.
The source elements for this DVD edition are not your typical "duped" 16mm print. They appear to be printed from a negative generated by reduction from a 35mm POSITIVE print. It also appears that exposure correction may have been applied to various scenes during the printing process. This then is probably a studio duplicate using a 16mm duped reduction inter-negative, resulting in a 16mm print with fine contrast and gray tones, while still exhibiting good image resolution and sound. The sound for this negative may have been electro-optically transfered, thus reducing the distortion and noise contributed by optics-only duplication, and nearly matches the sound quality of a true original 16mm print. The sound is so primitive however, that it is hard to be certain. Nevertheless, the dialog comes through nearly as well as from original 16mm studio prints of other titles from this period. The music, however, is a bit distorted and shrill at times.
Having gone to the trouble to make a 16mm reduction inter-negative, it is surprising that the 35mm source print for it wasn't first cleaned up. There are emulsion lines, and a lot of dirt that could have been removed fairly economically. My guess is that the inter-negative was made long ago, before methods for line removal had been developed and before the film was felt important enough for such maintenance. Nevertheless, the results, while hardly gorgeous, are the best I've seen of this title, and the DVD should bear up well to repeated or extended viewing.
I find Daniel P. B. Smith's comments (elsewhere on this page) telling. I quote: "In the late sixties, I saw a clean print of this movie in a New York theatre and it blew me away. ...it is visually spectacular.... The sound was...crisp and clear and capable of delivering the impact of the Arthur Bliss music." I envy you, Daniel.
Just because such a 35mm print was still extant in the 60's is no proof that such a print still exists more than 30 years later, although it seems likely. It is lamentable that the film has not been digitized, and so preserved for all time, using original 35mm elements. This is a visually ground-breaking film which continues to impress viewers as well as influence film makers, and it will no doubt continue to do so; but unless a collector comes forward with an original 35mm print for high resolution digital transfer, future generations may be consigned to view it thru a glass, darkly. But, at least with this DVD, the glass is now significantly less dark. Thank you Image Entertainment for taking pains to obtain this print.
Rating: 
Summary: Greatness and Annoying
Review: Let me preface this review by letting you know my frame of reference. I am reviewing Things to Come as a film, a historical visual doccument and a DVD Things To Come has excellent set design, they evoke images that still ring strong. It's depiction of civilization and near feudalism due to constant war and attrition of resources creates a dramatic contrast when the future's 'Everytown' goes from a metropois to a shelled city, to a home for tinhorn dictators. The second section of the film, the rebuilding and absortion of civillization into the world of science and progress is fun to watch, the sets hold up well today, even the rounded look a airplanes and society. I also need to preface this review by saying I liked looking at the film but at times gritted my teeth at the dialog. It was the 1930's so I can forgive some overacting and mugging as it was the tradition of it's time, but the endless preaching of science as the savior of mankind and the 'c' word, civillization gets old fast. Worse, the film and dialog seemingly contradict themselves. Science is the only hope for humanity yet it is pondered if things haven't progressed too far. Think of the film as a bell curve. The action builds, meets it's climax halfway through the film and starts to lose steam. The future city looks great but there's very little that clues us in on society other than H.G. Well's rants about a science based socialist state compared to a dictatiorship. If you like the politics you might enjoy the dialog. I could have accepted the themes if they would have been backed up by actions. It's a film, not the short story. The transfer to DVD is poor. If this is the film to buy I can only shudder to think what a bad version is like. There are many segments where the picture literally sparkles unintentionally. The print quality may be acceptable in terms of saving what is left of it to archive but many of it's problems could have been fixed with no continuity changes. The sound is terrible as well, at times distorted but comprehendable. Again, this could have been fixed rather easily if someone warranted the restoration. Perhaps because Things To Come is difficult for several reasons it is not deemed worth quality commercial treatment. As a result your stereo (if you use one) will sound like the worlds largest $0.50 speaker. To sum:
Hisorical importance: 5
The film itself: 3
Transfer to DVD: 1 Get it if you want to see some fightenly close to reality scenes of war and destruction or the fine art deco tinged future. There's projections or holograms predicted, and not to far from our possible future, Metropolis influenced buildings that look like late 80's malls. :) Things to Come is visually pleasing as long as you can get past the film transfer. It is an enjoyable flick but probably aimed more for film buffs and scholars than a general audience.
Rating:
Summary: Snap that mainspring
Review: Of all the whacked-out, loopy, unhinged and nutso stories that have made it to the sci-fi screen, this one takes the cake. It's the ultimate, the greatest science fiction movie ever made in English. Seeing it is what you might expect an episode of schizophrenia to be like: you just get drawn further and further away from reality and you're helpless to resist. H. G. Wells reportedly had a close hand in fashioning this pre-vision of what World War Two and its aftermath might be like and his eccentricity just adds to the enjoyment. Ralph Richardson lets it all hang out as only the English can do when they get unbuttoned, and Raymond Massey is equally fine. His eagle-like profile gazing into the heavens while a choir sings "Which Will It Be?" is an image you won't forget in a hurry.
Rating:
Summary: Eerie, but worthwhile
Review: Okay, enough already about the transfers, let's talk about the film itself. In a nutshell, this 1936 Brit sci-fi feature deals with war and progress. Everytown (London?) is shown in 1940 about to celebrate Christmas amidst blaring headlines of war (in a nifty bit of symbolism, the children play with war toys around the Christmas tree). Then war hits the city (in an eerily accurate foretelling of the German blitz that DID rock England in 1940). As time goes on, the war drags into decades ending up in a post-apocalyptic society in 1966. Because of the war, Everytown/London has regressed into a crude, medieval type society without electricity which wastes its resources on senseless wars and is led by a Hitler-type warlord ogre called "The Boss." The world is also famished by a deadly, incurable disease called "Wandering Sickenss" whose victims are shot by the boss (reminds you of Castro's quarantine of AIDS patients). John Cabal (Raymond Massey) is a leader of scientists who return to civilize Everytown/London and establish a scientific technocracy. But the Boss demands the technology to wage more war, which he tells his followers is necessary for the peace (he begins to sound frighteningly like George Bush Jr. during such speeches). Anyway, the Boss and Cabal face off, and I'll leave the rest to your imagination. A moon shot and some anti-progress protesters (simialr to today's anti WTO protesters) play major parts in the latter third of the story. For those of us who are into history, this film is extremely eerie, yet fascinating and worthwhile to watch. It's scary in that some of what H.G. Wells prophesized did indeed come true in ways that are even more so than what I just mentioned. (Think of some of today's so-called Third World countries whose resources are wasted by boss-like dictators among other things). Basically, this film, despite the overtly speechike dialogue (Raymond Massey's soliloquy about the need for progress near the film's end is a bit hard to take), is an eloquent sermon on the hindrance that war makes on the progress of humanity and the need for education to triumph over ignorance. It would be great for a high school or college history teacher to show and have a discussion with their classes about this film.
Rating:
Summary: Remastered but NOT restored
Review: One of the great things about DVD is the increase in resolution. This is *very apparent* in Things To Come. Now that someone has found a 35mm print and gone to the trouble of tranferring it, we get to see the details in the production design. For afficionadoes, the texturing of the models, and the thousands of tiny people (also models) seizing the Space Gun are probably worth it. But be warned: it is still an old print. Some reels are better than others, and the whole thing could use a good clean and some scratch removal. As for the content? I must confess it's a guilty pleasure -- just like The Fountainhead, this film is so far over the top it's a must have. Ironically, Raymond Massey is in both -- another excuse for buying it, perhaps?
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