From the perspective of it’s 1937 audience, this movie takes place in the near future, 1940 to be exact, and in England, and it is a time in which people are more interested in Christmas (stupid stupid Christmas!)  than the drum beats of War that seem to be coming out of some unnamed European nation (Prolly Germany!!*). Slowly people start taking it seriously, but not soon enough to make a difference because the bad guys (Prolly Germany!!*) start bombing England.

*think about modern movies where terrorists are not muslims

So of course your first reaction is “WOW! A 1937 movie that accurately predicts the start of World War II! HG Wells is some kind of a Sorcerer!”

Well, you could say that about a few movies, such as the 1938 film specifically called “If War Comes Tomorrow” and the 1940 Heinlein story “Solution Unsatisfactory” in which WW2 starts, America joins in, then 5 years later invents the atom bomb and uses it to win the war, and then begins a cold war arms race with the Soviet Union (as if..).  Or think about all of the other material written as far back as Nostradamus that, like the proverbial broken clock, gets things right once in a while or twice a day, as the case may be, without being entirely wrong about every single thing that happens next, which is what happens in THINGS TO COME (ding dong ding dong ding dong ding dong)!

Basically, here is what happens in H.G. Wells’  prophetic vision of World War Two: A million bi-planes engage in a poisonous gas war that destroys civilization, followed by stuff that happens in the middle part of Mel Gibson in The Road Warrior, and then there is a Zombie outbreak, and then Benevolent Socialists from Iraq force their dictatorial will on what’s left of human individualism, and then a hundred years later a descendant of the leader of the Enlightened Benevolent Socialist Iraqis puts a boy and his daughter into the nose of a projectile, and with the cannon idea stolen from Jules Verne he fires it randomly into space vaguely citing “Progress” as his motivation while a smartly clothed, healthy and apparently *very ignorant* population are whipped into a frenzy by a seemingly disingenuous and sinisterly depicted opposition leader who only wants to know why he is risking lives doing something that apparently has no purpose.  THE END.

This isn’t the first time H.G. Wells’ starts off seeming to be accurately predicting something that then goes way off the rails, out into the weeds, and sinks nose first into that bottomless bog behind the Bates Motel.

In his 1913 novel The World Set Free, an intuitively predicted World War One actually kicks off right on schedule but quickly escalates into an Atomic War. So of course your first reaction might also be WOW! But then here’s what happens:

 

H.G. Wells’ “Atomic Bombs” are that in name only.  What they really are is something that has never existed and won’t ever exist because they are impossible and also stupid.  They are basically a sort of napalm-filled Molotov cocktail orb that lights up and never goes out and can be manufactured by anyone and hidden inside a bail of hay.

After the interesting part is over, everyone realizes that War Bad and all of the smart people take over and decide that people are dumb and stupid and need to be dictated how things are going to be.

One bad bad bad bad man hides some Atomic Bombs in some hay because he is stupidly thinking of trying to defend his country but he is quickly murdered by the Socialist Peace Force that takes over the world.  After Worldwide Socialism takes over, nobody has to work at all! So there’s no crime or Anything! And all people do is Arts and Stuff! And it’s Really Fantastic! And Also Your Stupid! THE END