H.G. Wells Reviews Metropolis

[J-Sun]

It's just possible he didn't entirely like it.

Strangely literal-minded for the most part and not always really reviewing the film as a film, but sometimes reviewing it as a sort of book. Also not much in the swing of the "science fiction conversation" as it developed in the 30s US, as he doesn't seem to want anyone else to be able to talk about robots despite automata long preceding Kapek.

Though I do get how the pro-tech futurist part of him could have been offended.

A couple of amusing bits:

That vertical city of the future we know now is, to put it mildly, highly improbable. Even in New York and Chicago, where the pressure on the central sites is exceptionally great, it is only the central office and entertainment region that soars and excavates.

A vast, penniless slave population may be necessary for wealth where there are no mass production machines, but it is preposterous with mass production machines. You find such a real proletariat in China still; it existed in the great cities of the ancient world; but you do not find it in America, which has gone furtherest in the direction of mechanical industry, and there is no grain of reason in supposing it will exist in the future.