Fresh Start, Old Warnings: Lessons from Films Placed in 2026 Show Us?
The year 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 represents one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style development – primarily the broad integration of AI – appearing bleak, or perhaps even worse. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored anti-human technology might operate a bit better?) Did no one warn us regarding this?
The answer, at least regarding science fiction films made long ago (or sometimes recently) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of those warnings are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is ultimately decimated, we will most likely bring down the ape population with us). Some of them are visionary; others just resemble bad visual effects. But it's valuable to explore where different directors, ranging from masters to grunts, thought we'd be situated by now in our planet's development. Therefore, we shall examine a selection of the movies that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they contain any lessons to teach us.
The Game 'Doom'
Well, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to establish a research facility. Currently, the negative events – in terms of plot and in terms of garish cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – does not actually transpire for another 20 years in the future, so should we find a portal to Mars this year, we might have some time to avoid true disaster. If we did uncover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would still be extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the discovery was not a thing he funded himself, enabling him to claim messianic ownership for mankind's expansion into the stars. That's before we even get to the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent mutations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for why, exactly we allow Mars become a stretch-goal aspiration for humanity. Be it in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely serve as a symbol of hope. If anyone wishes to close that dubious Martian real estate sale, maybe they should start with first ensuring the fantasy version look good.
The Marvel Dregs
A of the strangest features of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the various world-threatening cataclysms, including a half-decade leap whose occurrences are mostly undepicted in the movies themselves; the films have turned into a clock radio perpetually set a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. So there's a whole bunch of MCU content that fan sites helpfully explain to be taking place in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so seem quite detached from any concrete sense of time. However the poorer material is some of the worst the studio has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're in for a great deal of frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the accompanying spin that actually, this confusing mess unfolding before our eyes is essential to future events. More troublingly, in the real world that assertion will likely prove correct.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Most of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series is located in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, starting its timeline approximately 2016. So by the time a pathogen that devastates most of Earth’s human population has run its course, and also enhanced the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s merely 2026, with additional human indignities (and simian triumphs) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this contagion propagates globally and set in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the wake of the actual global health crisis that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; astonishingly, we’re already six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously impacted by the still-spreading virus, was not wiped out, and technological infrastructure certainly has not been disabled. Yet this bleakest of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a significant downer to offer, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines either, will inevitably lead to violent conflict, regardless of the efforts of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, although those instincts don't represent the most. Right now, it seems hard to argue with that, despite the fact that we ought to try.
Metropolis
By far the best-known portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to celebrating its centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where rich businessmen lord over the towers as laborers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that power the city. Affluent surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these massive class divisions when he falls for Maria, an subterranean organizer who advocates for a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans builds a automaton in her image, hoping to bring the entire Metropolis to ruin. Here, a robot created to imitate a human isn't a tool of the elite, but someone who desires to witness their downfall; it's one element flipped by the modern world in a future that in other ways appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology depends on old-fashioned human toil, which seems like a most logical fusion of rightwing disdain for “unskilled workers” and business enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's simple to picture a slightly more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a return to industrial production. The more complex, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the have-nots is spanned with compassion; not so much with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the chance
