H.G. Well's Things to Come - 1936

Things to Come sets out a future history from 1940 to 2036. In the screenplay, or "treatment" that Wells published in 1935, before the film was released, the story ends in the year "A.D. 2054". It is set in the fictional British city of 'Everytown'. Successful businessman John Cabal cannot enjoy Christmas Day, 1940, with the ominous news of possible war. His guest, Harding, shares his worries, while his other friend, the over-optimistic Passworthy, believes it will not come to pass - or even if it does, it will do good by accelerating technological progress.

A bombing raid on the city that night results in general mobilisation and global war. Some time later, Cabal, now piloting a biplane, shoots down a one-man enemy bomber. He lands and pulls the badly injured enemy (John Clements) from the wreckage. As they dwell on the madness of war, they have to put on their gas masks, as poison gas drifts in their direction. When a little girl runs towards them, the wounded man insists she take his mask, saying he is done for anyway. Cabal takes the girl to his aeroplane, pausing to leave the doomed man a revolver.

The man dwells on the irony that he may have gassed the child's family and yet he has saved her. He then shoots himself. The war continues into the 1960s, long enough for the people of the world to have forgotten why they are fighting in the first place. Humanity enters a new Dark Age. The world is in ruins and there is little technology left apart from the firearms used to wage war. In 1966, a biological weapon called the "wandering sickness" is used by the unnamed enemy in a final desperate bid for victory.

Dr. Harding and his daughter Mary struggle to find a cure, but with little equipment, it is hopeless. The plague kills half of humanity and extinguishes the last vestiges of central government. By 1970, a local warlord called the "Chief" or the "Boss" (Ralph Richardson) has risen to power in southern England and eradicated the sickness by shooting the infected. He dreams of conquering the "hill people" to obtain coal and shale to render into oil so his biplanes can fly again. On May Day 1970, a futuristic aeroplane lands outside the town.

The sole pilot, John Cabal, emerges and proclaims that the last surviving band of "engineers and mechanics" have formed a civilisation called "Wings Over the World". They are based in Basra, Iraq, and have renounced war and outlawed independent nations. The Boss takes the pilot prisoner and forces him to work for Gordon, a mechanic working on repairing the few remaining aeroplanes. Together, they manage to fix a plane. When Gordon takes it up for a test flight, he flees to alert Cabal's friends.

Wings Over the World attacks Everytown with gigantic aeroplanes and drops sleeping gas bombs on the town. The Boss orders his biplanes to attack but they are shot down. The people of Everytown awaken shortly thereafter, to find it occupied by the Airmen and the Boss dead. A montage follows, showing decades of technological progress, beginning with Cabal explaining plans for global consolidation by Wings Over the World. By 2036 (or 2054 in the book), mankind lives in modern underground cities, including the new 'Everytown.' However, all is not well.

The sculptor Theotocopulos (Cedric Hardwicke) incites the populace to demand a "rest" from the rush of progress, symbolised by the first manned flight around the Moon. The modern-day Luddites are opposed by Oswald Cabal (Massey again), the head of the governing council and grandson[2] of John Cabal. Oswald Cabal's daughter Catherine (Pearl Argyle) and her boyfriend Horrie Passworthy insist on flying the spaceship. When a mob rushes to destroy the space gun used to propel the spacecraft, Cabal launches the ship ahead of schedule.

At the conclusion of the film, Oswald Cabal delivers a speech about Progress and humanity's quest for knowledge. "CABAL: '. . . for MAN no rest and no ending. He must go on—conquest beyond conquest. This little planet and its winds and ways, and all the laws of mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about him, and at last out across immensity to the stars.

And when he has conquered all the deeps of space and all the mysteries of time—still he will be beginning. . . . If we’re no more than animals—we must snatch at our little scraps of happiness and live and suffer and pass, mattering no more—than all the other animals do—or have done. (He points out at the stars.) It is that—or this? All the universe—or nothingness. . . . Which shall it be?"