Nearly all that we think of as science fiction passes through the writer H.G. Wells. Wells was able to see society change dramatically during his life and that dramatic change no doubt inspired to wonder what would be later still. Thus we get the massive tome The Shape of Things to Come, a future history of sorts speculating about the future of mankind by assessing his past and present. That work has nominally been adapted to screen twice, though that's not really true either.
The first adaptation is Alexander Korda's Things to Come, a large-scaled science fiction show that follows the struggles of man and womankind from now to the near future when man's wars have all but decimated society and reduced civilization to tribes. Then we got into the far future and find a gleaming well-ordered society which proposes to leave this Earth for what lies beyond. The point of all of this is that man's strengths and weaknesses are always with us no matter the state of society and in fact in spite of those aspects of ourselves we must rise above and seek something better than ourselves.
There are a number of splendid visuals in this movie with its all-star cast. The sight of the enormous airplanes with occupied with sleek black clothed men of purpose and the finale of the giant gun which fires man's hopes into the great beyond. (Why that gun has a sight I'll never know, but it looks fantastic.) But despite the arch storytelling I find I really feel something about the heights and depths of what man can accomplish.
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