Welcome To 1984: Seven dystopian fiction films to help grasp our political climate

Things to Come (Amazon Prime/Filmstruck)

A 1936 adaptation of H. G. Wells’ 1933 novel, Things to Come is fascinating on a lot of levels. Visually, it’s utterly fantastic, full of the gorgeously stylized futurist trappings of that era, and its effects work is stunning for the era. It’s also a tremendously bleak film, predicting war, pestilence and mass death throughout the coming centuries that’d put ours to shame, with World War II destroying the world as we know it after forty years of perpetual conflict. For added perspective, t’s vision of an optimist future in which a benevolent air-based society creates a world government and sends man into the stars can look shockingly bleak from other perspectives. It’s an impossibly epic undertaking, and though it can’t compete with the sheer artistry of Lang’s masterpiece, Things to Come is essential viewing for the science fiction obsessive.