Correctly predicted WWII and space travel and Televisions
Only 200 people had TVs in 1936!
http://tinyurl.com/privacy-06Click trailer,watch&vote plz share
Hardly seems worth broadcasting to only 200 people, I wonder what programs they even had. I doubt many.
shareI disagree, and besides, I wouldn't really call these things "predictions". I don't think they were actually "predicting" the events or developments shown, just depicting them for the story.
Anyway, as predictions go, this movie is decidedly INCORRECT, and not very impressive:
First, television had been developed and demonstrated in 1927, and several systems were being devised or were actually in use by 1936 -- on a very limited basis, to be sure, but they were there. The BBC began regular TV broadcasts that year, as did German broadcasting. Limited TV (about once a week) had been shown in New York City as early as 1930, and later spread to Syracuse, NY (home of GE labs) and other eastern US cities. Television was projected in a number of other films of the 1930s as well, several made before Things to Come. And this film did not predict "televisions" (as the thread subject reads), certainly not in the way they actually developed -- or existed even at the time.
Second, the film's supposed prediction of World War II was not especially accurate or impressive. Okay, Christmas 1940 was only 15 months later than the actual war began, but at least one other, earlier movie -- the 1933 MGM film Men Must Fight -- had posited the outbreak of a second world war in 1940. By 1936, many people foresaw a new global war coming in the next few years, and in any event the concept was hardly far-fetched or "out there". Even France's Marshal Foch, commenting on the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, had declared, "This is not peace -- it is an armistice for twenty years." Now that was a prediction.
Third, the concept of space travel was also not new or innovative. Granted, not many people in the 30s believed it was really possible, but Jules Verne wrote of it in the 1860s, long before Wells. Georges Melies filmed A Trip to the Moon in 1902, and Fritz Lang made Woman in the Moon in 1929. On a non-fiction level, Robert Goddard had been conducting rocket experiments since the late 1910s, and was famous enough that an article in The New York Times in 1920 carried the scoffing headline, BELIEVES ROCKET CAN REACH THE MOON!. (In 1969, the Times issued a formal, and posthumous, apology to Goddard for its smart-aleck attitude.) Other rocket experiments were being conducted in Germany and the USSR. Moreover, the "prediction" made by Things to Come was, by 1936, outmoded and ridiculous: the movie showed a capsule being fired out of a giant cannon. But even in 1936 all serious scientists knew that any rocket would have to be launched by its own propulsion method, which is what was being experimented on even then, and is of course how launches have been accomplished for decades. Every qualified scientist knew that using a cannon, its other drawbacks or uselessness aside, would kill its occupants through its own concussion. (In the film, even Cabal warns the mob, "Beware of the concussion! Beware of the concussion!" Evidently it didn't occur to any of them what the effects of the concussion would be on the passengers...all decked out in their air-tight togas.)
So no, Things to Come did not "predict" anything. Everything in it had either been predicted earlier, and usually much more accurately, or was already in existence in some form. If anything, TTC's glaring errors were far more notable than its supposed "predictions".
Virtually nobody in 1936 knew what a television was, yet today you can watch the movie on the same type of wide screen flat panel television used in the movie.
I thought it was cool.
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Making a prediction does not require that you are the first one to make it. I'd add this film predicted that air power would be the difference maker in the next world war. That was not believed by some top men in government.
shareI never said a prediction had to be "first" to be a prediction, but the OP was marveling at this film as thought it were the first, or predicting some unheard-of, outlandish developments. In any case, nothing of what it allegedly "predicted" turned out to be accurate or true.
I'd also dispute that it "predicted" that air power would be the "difference maker" in the next world war. It's true some people in 1936 didn't think so -- but many did. That aside, in the film itself air power is not a "difference maker" in the war -- we see an air battle and some planes but the war dragged on for 30 years before Wings Over the World put an end to it. Even in 1970 Everytown is still using the same biplanes that had been there since 1940.
WOTW used air power, but they weren't combatants in the war, in the way the other combatants were. In fact, in the war proper, we see lots of developments in other weapons (like those art-deco tanks) but none whatever in aircraft, and the war was fought mainly on land.
Also, "predicting" things like television and rockets that were already in existence (even if in rudimentary form) doesn't really constitute a "prediction".
I don't see the word first in the OP. It's a pretty good psychic who can pick a few good predictions out of the morass of false ones.
The raid against "the boss" the technocrats win because of superior airpower. And their double plane, while obviously not viable, represents a flying fortress, a 4 engine long range bomber that can defend itself against the more primitive single engine fighters. That chapter of the film would be a metaphor to WW2 in any film history class, except that it was made before the war started.
I don't see the word first in the OP.
I didn't say the OP used the word "first". I wrote that he marveled at this film as though it were the first to "predict" such things.
It's a pretty good psychic who can pick a few good predictions out of the morass of false ones.
It didn't "predict" television because television had already been in existence for several years. It didn't predict space travel because that too had already been predicted and discussed and rocket experiments had been underway for many years, though most people didn't believe it possible.
As for "predicting" the war, when you're making a movie in 1936 about the horrors of a prolonged war that destroys civilization as part of a plea for man to find a new way of existence, it makes no sense to set it in some far-distant future like the year 2000 or something. Most people in 1936 thought a new war might be just a few years off -- so naturally you'd set the story accordingly, in the near future, to hammer home the point that this was something that would affect the audiences' own lives. Starting the war in 1940 wasn't very imaginative or out of most people's thoughts. It was actually a very reasonable -- dare I say, predictable -- date.
You're right that the technocrats (Wings Over the World) win over the Boss and apparently everyone else because of air power. But the point was theirs was the only air power that saw development over the previous 30 years. Otherwise air development had stood still, with the Boss and others still fighting with 1930s biplanes. But to say this is a metaphor for WWII, even in a film history class, is going way over the top. Nothing like the planes shown in Things to Come ever existed: yes, we had Flying Fortresses and, later, massive cargo planes that could airlift large amounts of cargo and numbers of troops to war zones, but nothing like what we see in the movie. Granted poetic license and the pitfalls of predicting the future (especially when the makers of the film have such a poor grasp of technological realities, as with their moon rocket), nonetheless to carry this to the lengths of saying it's a metaphor for the reality of WWII aircraft is nudging reality into the realm of the absurd...not to mention that WOTW's aircraft appear in 1970, not the 1940s.
All this apart from one other crucial aspect -- the film wasn't making predictions. It was telling a story. It wanted to make it seem immediate to its audience so set it in the near future. But it didn't say, this will happen, or we'll have all these inventions. So saying this film "correctly predicted" all these things is itself incorrect -- it wasn't "correct" except in some vague, very broad sense, it was often incorrect (as in the duration of the war, off by 25 years, or about the use of gas bombs in the war), and in any event it wasn't predicting anything. share
There were televisions and also airplanes in 1936. But neither played a major role in WW1 or contemporary life. This film successfully predicts that they will be common place and major forces in the future.
And the title of the film certainly stakes out a position on the future.
Neither played a major role in WW1? Do you mean WW2? Television obviously hadn't been invented when WWI occurred but airplanes had and saw huge leaps in development during that war. Of course they didn't play anywhere near the role they would in WWII, either in quantity or importance, but they certainly did play a significant role in the first war. By 1936 planes were playing an increased role in contemporary life, both militarily and in the civilian realm, a role that was increasing steadily each year. In fact it was overstated claims about the size of the Luftwaffe that so terrified many in Britain and France from around 1936 and 1937 on.
So planes at any rate were already commonplace and growing forces in 1936. Projecting an increase in their importance was hardly, well, rocket science. That's not much in the way of a prediction. As for television, Things to Come actually shows only one use of a device akin to television, the huge screen on which Theotocopulos addresses the people. So it's debatable how "major" a force it is in the future. And while that is television, it's nothing that resembles what the device has actually become.
But to repeat, the film is not predicting anything, in the sense that it's telling the audience that this is what will happen and these things will be around. It's just telling a made-up story that happens to utilize a bunch of futuristic scenarios and devices, almost all the latter of which were already in existence in some form in 1936. When you have cars, it isn't very predictive to postulate that the cars of 50 years hence will be around but different and more plentiful, and in any case, it's only a movie, not a prediction.
And the title of the film certainly stakes out a position on the future.
Actually, the title doesn't "stake out" a position on anything. It's just a science fiction title for a science fiction movie about the future. It doesn't claim to be a story predicting real events or inventions. But if you insist that the film is predicative and stakes out the future because it depicts futuristic aircraft and futuristic television (inventions already in existence), then you also have to own it for its "predictions" of a 25-year-long world war that destroys civilization, global brigandage, underground cities replacing surface dwelling, and a moon rocket shot out of a cannon manned by a man and woman wearing togas and sitting in fishnet hammocks for take-off.
Not so predictive there. You can't pick and choose the things that support your theory and just ignore everything that doesn't. share
Not so predictive there. You can't pick and choose the things that support your theory and just ignore everything that doesn't.
Actually we can and I will. The claim was simply that TtC correctly predicted two things about the next world war. No one said it was a psychic film that unerringly predicted everything to come.
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