Fresh Start, Familiar Cautionary Tales: Lessons from Films Set in 2026 Show Us?
The date 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 represents a leap forward, and it's where we currently stand, with each science-fiction-style advancement – chiefly the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – appearing dystopian, or perhaps more grim. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored anti-human technology would actually operate a bit better?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm regarding this?
The answer, particularly concerning science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally months ago) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of those warnings are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably ravaged, we will almost certainly bring down the primate species alongside us). Some of them are visionary; the rest just resemble poor visual effects. But it's valuable to explore where different directors, from geniuses to journeymen, believed we'd be situated by now in the world's evolution. Therefore, we shall take a look a selection of the films that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they contain any lessons to impart.
Doom
Well, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to set up a research facility. Currently, the negative events – in terms of narrative and in terms of over-the-top film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually transpire for two more decades later, so even if we find a portal to Mars now, we could gain a respite to avoid true disaster. If we did uncover a portal to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether Elon Musk would still be extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the discovery was not a thing he funded himself, allowing him to claim savior-like ownership for mankind's expansion to the cosmos. This precedes we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting transformations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for why, exactly we let Mars become a long-term aspiration for humanity. Whether in John Carpenter's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to serve as a beacon of optimism. Should someone wants to make that questionable Martian real estate sale, maybe they should start with at least ensuring the fictional depiction appear appealing.
The Marvel Dregs
A of the strangest features of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the various global disasters, including a half-decade leap whose events are mostly not shown in the films themselves; the movies have turned into a alarm clock perpetually running a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. So there's a large assortment of Marvel stuff that fan sites clarify to be taking place in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so seem pretty unmoored from our 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 farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're in for a great deal of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the accompanying spin that actually, this nonsensical crap happening before our eyes is essential to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that assertion will probably turn out to be accurate.
The Apes Saga Continues
Most of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the further-flung future of Earth, but the new trilogy 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 most of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously boosted the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s merely 2026, with additional human indignities (and victories for apes) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this contagion propagates globally and taking place in 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the real-world pandemic that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re already six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously wounded by the still-spreading virus, was not wiped out, and technological infrastructure certainly hasn't been knocked out. Yet this bleakest of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a significant bummer to offer, implying that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably lead to violent conflict, no matter the work of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, although those instincts don't represent the most. Right now, it seems hard to dispute that, despite the fact that we probably should.
Metropolis
Easily the best-known depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen preside over the skyscrapers as workers toil underground on the machines that keep everything running. Affluent city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these enormous social gaps when he falls for Maria, an underground organizer who preaches a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans creates a robot in her likeness, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a robot designed to mimic a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who desires to see them destroyed; it's one element flipped by reality in a future that in other ways seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery depends on old-fashioned manual labor, which appears as a perfect fusion of conservative disdain for “unskilled workers” and business enthusiasm for an tech boom. It has not yet come to pass, but it's simple to picture a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The trickier, less plausible accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the gap between the haves and the poor is spanned with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the chance
