Things to Come in Color: A weird, bright, and exhausting trip

If you have a spare two hours and a high tolerance for people standing in rooms giving long, booming speeches about the "destiny of man," this might be for you. If you prefer movies where things actually happen instead of just being explained at you, skip it. You will probably hate this if you get bored by theater-style acting where every single line is projected to the back row of a massive auditorium.

The whole thing feels like a stage play that got lost on its way to a soundstage. Cedric Hardwicke is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Honestly, I think he was just tired of the set design. Everything is so aggressively geometric. It’s like the Art Deco movement exploded in a factory and no one bothered to clean it up.

There is a point halfway through where the color kicks in and it’s… well, it’s certainly bright. It feels less like a movie and more like someone showing off a new toy they don’t quite know how to use yet. I found myself staring at the background extras more than the main characters. Why is that one guy in the corner just staring at a wall for three straight minutes? It’s oddly hypnotic. 🤨

It’s funny to compare this to something like The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks. Both deal with grand visions of society, but while that one feels like a chaotic riot, this is just a very stiff, very loud lecture. The way the characters talk about war is so sterile you’d think they were discussing the weather. There is no grit. Just suits and plans.

• The sets look like they are made of cardboard and hope.
• Raymond Massey has a chin that could cut glass.
• The transition to color feels like a glitch in the simulation.
• The dialogue is so dense I think I lost a few brain cells trying to keep up.

I caught myself checking my watch. Twice. It’s not that it’s a bad movie, exactly. It’s just so convinced of its own importance that it forgets to be interesting. It reminds me of the pacing issues in Robin Hood, where the momentum just dies whenever someone starts talking about the greater good. Just stop talking and show me a cool machine or something!

The ending is meant to be this big, sweeping moment of hope for humanity. I just felt relieved it was over. Sometimes the future is best left in black and white, or better yet, just left alone entirely. 📽️