Fresh Start, Familiar Warnings: Lessons from Films Set in 2026 Teach Us?
The year 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies a leap forward, and it's where we currently stand, with each futuristic development – primarily the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – appearing bleak, or possibly more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored anti-human technology would actually operate more effectively?) Didn't anyone warn us about this?
The answer, at least regarding science fiction films made long ago (or occasionally months ago) set in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but specifically far-fetched (when mankind is inevitably decimated, we will almost certainly take the primate species alongside us). Others of them are prescient; others just resemble bad green screen. Yet it remains worth examining where different directors, from geniuses to journeymen, thought we'd be situated by this time in our planet's development. Therefore, we shall take a look a selection of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and determine if they have anything to impart.
The Game 'Doom'
Well, this isn't promising. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth can establish a research facility. Now, the negative events – in terms of plot and in terms of over-the-top film versions of a FPS video game – does not actually go down for two more decades in the future, so should we find a Martian gateway this year, we might have some time to avert catastrophe. If we did discover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would remain super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the portal was not a thing he funded himself, allowing him to claim messianic ownership for mankind's expansion into the stars. That's before we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting mutations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for why, exactly we let Mars serve as a stretch-goal hope for mankind. Be it in the director's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to act as a symbol of hope. If anyone wants to close that dubious Martian property deal, perhaps they should start with first making the fictional depiction appear appealing.
The Marvel Dregs
A of the goofiest quirks of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the multiple world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are mostly not shown in the movies themselves; the movies have turned into a alarm clock perpetually set a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of MCU content that various wikis clarify to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated adventure *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so feel quite unmoored from any concrete sense of time. But the poorer material is some of the worst Marvel has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on this stuff, we're in for a great deal of annoying stagnation in 2026, including the accompanying narrative that in truth, this confusing mess unfolding before our eyes is essential to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the real world that claim will probably prove correct.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Most of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, initiating its timeline around 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that devastates most of Earth’s people has run its course, and also boosted the intelligence of primates, it’s only 2026, with additional human indignities (and victories for apes) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this contagion propagates around the world and taking place in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual pandemic that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; if you can believe it, we’re already six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously impacted by the ongoing virus, was not wiped out, and our technology definitely hasn't been knocked out. Yet this bleakest of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a substantial bummer to offer, suggesting that human and/or ape nature, however one defines either, will inevitably lead to warfare, no matter the efforts of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, although those drives are not held by the most. Right now, it feels difficult to argue with that, despite the fact that we probably should.
The Silent Classic
Easily the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where rich businessmen preside over the towers as laborers toil below the surface on the equipment that keep everything running. Rich city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground activist who preaches a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans creates a robot in her image, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a robot created to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but someone who wants to witness their downfall; it's one element flipped by the modern world in a future that in other ways seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery depends on traditional manual labor, which appears as a perfect fusion of conservative disdain for “unskilled workers” and corporate zeal for an AI bubble. It has not yet materialized, but it's simple to imagine a slightly less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The more complex, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is bridged with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the possibility
