In 1915, Lindsay forecast that the future ‘prophet wizards’ of American cinema would use it like a kind of time machine to visualise the Republic's global destiny and outstrip ‘the submarine mood of Verne, the press-thebutton complacency of Bellamy, the wireless telegraph enthusiasm of Wells’. Nevertheless, all the following characteristics, which the doyen of commentators on modernity Lewis Mumford identified as typifying film in the mid-thirties, were also prominent in Wells's writings as we have seen:

However, despite the astonishing promise of this early imaginative synergy with film and related media, Wells's subsequent record on screen, through both his own scripting and adaptation by others, presents an indubitable curate's egg. All too often Wells's texts have been visualised in ‘dumbed-down’ form and not just because they were ahead of the evolutionary state of the industry that attempted to realise them. Indeed, Don G. Smith argues that ‘cinema has probably betrayed Wells more than it has any other important author’, continually ransacking his work for sensational scenarios, creating global ‘event movies’ out of them while gutting the inconveniently challenging questions they raised. Smith concludes that because the industry developed on a particular commercial and cultural model, ‘In the end the cinema must be viewed as an entity opposed to Wells's ideas.’ Although he sought to harness this Leviathan for Wellsism, its ‘powers of conformity’ were consequently intractable, although whether that is good or bad depends on your political, moral and economic stance. However, Smith's judgement is perhaps too polarised. The real situation is more complex and disseminal. There is certainly a case to answer in many effects-rich, ideas-poor screen versions of Wells and their innumerable spin-offs and liftings.