New Year, Old Warnings: What Can Films Set in 2026 Teach Us?
The year 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies one step beyond, and it's where we find ourselves, with each science-fiction-style development – chiefly the widespread adoption of AI – seeming dystopian, or possibly even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology might function more effectively?) Didn't anyone warn us about this?
The response, at least regarding our sci-fi movies from years ago (or sometimes months ago) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of those warnings are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but specifically implausible (if humanity is ultimately ravaged, we will most likely bring down the ape population alongside us). Others of them are visionary; others just look like bad green screen. But it's worth examining where different directors, from geniuses to journeymen, believed we'd be positioned by this time in the world's development. Therefore, we shall take a look at some of the movies that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they contain any lessons to impart.
The Game 'Doom'
Now, this isn't promising. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone 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 can establish a research facility. Currently, the negative events – regarding plot and in terms of over-the-top cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – doesn't really go down for two more decades in the future, so should we find a Martian gateway this year, we could gain some time to avoid true disaster. Were we to uncover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether Elon Musk would remain extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the discovery wasn't something he funded himself, enabling him to assert savior-like ownership for mankind's expansion to the cosmos. This precedes we even get to the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent mutations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for the reasons we allow Mars become a long-term hope for humanity. Be it in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to serve as a beacon of optimism. Should someone wishes to make that questionable red-planet real estate sale, perhaps they should start with first making the fantasy version appear appealing.
The Marvel Dregs
One of the strangest features of the present MCU is the way it handles the multiple world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a half-decade leap whose events are mostly undepicted in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a clock radio constantly running a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of MCU content that various wikis helpfully explain to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated romp *The Marvels*, take place distant from Earth, and so feel quite detached from our sense of time. But the poorer material is among the weakest the studio has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're in for a whole lot of annoying stagnation in 2026, including the related narrative that actually, this nonsensical crap happening before our eyes is crucial to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the actual world that claim will probably prove correct.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Most of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the more distant future of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, initiating its chronology around 2016. So by the time a pathogen that devastates the majority of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s merely 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this virus spreads around the world and taking place in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the real-world global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; if you can believe it, we’re already six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though clearly impacted by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been annihilated, and technological infrastructure definitely has not been disabled. Yet this bleakest of the four modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a substantial downer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines either, will inevitably lead to warfare, regardless of the work of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, even if those drives are not held by the most. Currently, it feels hard to dispute that, despite the fact that we probably should.
Metropolis
Easily the best-known depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where wealthy industrialists lord over the towers as laborers toil below the surface on the machines that power the city. Affluent surface resident Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean activist who advocates for a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans creates a automaton in her likeness, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a robot created to mimic a human isn't a tool of the elite, but someone who desires to see them destroyed; it's one element flipped by reality in a future that in other ways appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology depends on old-fashioned manual labor, which appears as a most logical fusion of conservative contempt for “unskilled workers” and corporate enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It has not yet come to pass, but it's easy to picture a slightly less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The trickier, less plausible feat is the ending of the film, where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is spanned with love; rather than with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the possibility
