10 Classic Films Whose Themes Still Ring True Today

6. Things To Come (1936)

Things to Come If, in The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin preached the good that science and technology can bestow upon the world, Things to Come attempts to show that good. Adapted by H.G. Wells from his own novel, The Shape of Things to Come, the film begins in Everytown, 1936 and ends in the same place 100 years later. It chronicles the onset of a great war that lasts nearly the entire centennial and features a worldwide plague (The Wandering Sickness) and a meteoric rise in technological advancement. The war eventually boils down to a feud between the air people, representing science, and the hill people, representing primitive life circa 1936. Of course, science wins as Wells was trying to make a point. The book and original script are much meatier than the final film and truthfully, the finished product is a middling tribulation featuring one diatribe after another, delivered by the oratorically gifted Raymond Massey. Though Wells misjudged how science would be abused, the film is actually quite ironic as it shows (most likely unintentionally) the destructive power science and technology have. Thus, even as the film's themes regarding science and technology have missed the mark, it's what Wells predicted the future would be like that merits the film's placement on this list. Humanity is totally dependent on technology now, and it's turning us into empathy-lacking, insociable and entitled droids who pine after any ego-driven maniac crazy enough to step up as a leader and tell us what to do! OK, the last half of that sentence is overly dramatic, I know, but the part up to when I call us entitled is on the money.
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Kevin Terpstra hasn't written a bio just yet, but if they had... it would appear here.