New Year, Old Warnings: What Can Films Set in 2026 Teach Us?
The date 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies a leap forward, and it's where we find ourselves, with every science-fiction-style advancement – chiefly the broad integration of AI – appearing dystopian, or possibly even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed anti-human technology might operate more effectively?) Didn't anyone warn us about this?
The answer, particularly regarding science fiction films from years ago (or sometimes months ago) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of those warnings are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but specifically implausible (when mankind is inevitably ravaged, we will almost certainly bring down the ape population with us). Others of them are visionary; the rest just look like bad green screen. But it's worth examining where various film-makers, ranging from masters to grunts, thought we'd be positioned by now in our planet's evolution. Therefore, we shall examine a selection of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and determine if they have anything to teach us.
Doom
Now, this isn't promising. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to set up a research facility. Currently, the negative events – regarding narrative and concerning over-the-top film versions of a FPS video game – doesn't really go down for another 20 years in the future, so even if we do discover a portal to Mars this year, we could gain some time to avert catastrophe. Were we to uncover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would remain extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the discovery wasn't something he personally paid for, enabling him to claim savior-like ownership for mankind's expansion into the stars. This precedes we consider the collection of Martian chromosomes and resulting transformations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is closer to 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for the reasons we allow Mars serve as a long-term hope for mankind. Be it in John Carpenter's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi 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 optimism. If anyone wishes to close that dubious Martian real estate sale, maybe they ought to begin with first ensuring the fictional depiction appear appealing.
The Marvel Dregs
One of the goofiest quirks of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the various world-threatening disasters, including a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are largely not shown in the movies themselves; the films 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 Marvel stuff 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 seem pretty unmoored from our sense of time. However the bad stuff is some of the worst Marvel has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless 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 frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the related spin that actually, this nonsensical crap happening before our eyes is crucial to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will likely turn out to be correct.
The Apes Saga Continues
The majority of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the more distant future of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, initiating its chronology around 2016. So by the time a pathogen that knocks out the majority 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) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this contagion spreads around the world and taking place around 2019, looks downright eerie in the aftermath of the actual global health crisis that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; astonishingly, we’re already six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though clearly impacted by the ongoing virus, was not annihilated, and our technology definitely hasn't been disabled. But this bleakest of the four modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a substantial downer in store, implying that human and/or ape nature, however one defines each, will inevitably result in warfare, regardless of the efforts of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, even if those drives don't represent 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 cinema is from a movie close to marking its centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where rich businessmen preside over the skyscrapers as workers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that keep everything running. Affluent surface resident Freder, son of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these enormous class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground organizer who preaches a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans creates a robot in her image, aiming to bring the whole of Metropolis to ruin. Here, a machine designed to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but an entity who desires to see them destroyed; it's a component inverted by the modern world in a future that otherwise appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery depends on traditional human toil, which appears as a most logical union of conservative disdain for “unskilled workers” and corporate enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's simple to picture a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a return to manufacturing. The more complex, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the have-nots is spanned with love; rather than with concrete reforms. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the possibility
