Fresh Start, Old Cautionary Tales: Lessons from Films Placed in 2026 Show Us?

The year 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 represents one step beyond, and it's where we find ourselves, with every futuristic development – primarily the widespread adoption of AI – appearing bleak, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed dehumanizing technology would actually function a bit better?) Did no one warn us about this?

The answer, at least concerning science fiction films made long ago (or sometimes months ago) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of those warnings are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably ravaged, we will most likely take the primate species alongside us). Some of them are prescient; the rest just look like poor visual effects. Yet it remains valuable to explore where different directors, ranging from masters to journeymen, believed we'd be positioned by now in our planet's evolution. So let's examine at some of the films that have been set in 2026 over the years and see if they have anything to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Currently, the bad stuff – in terms of narrative and concerning garish cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – does not actually transpire for another 20 years in the future, so even if we do discover a Martian gateway this year, we could gain a respite to avoid true disaster. Were we to uncover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard 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 wasn't something he funded himself, enabling him to claim messianic ownership for mankind's journey to the cosmos. This precedes we even get to the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and subsequent mutations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for why, exactly we allow Mars become a stretch-goal aspiration for humanity. Whether in John Carpenter's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely serve as a symbol of optimism. If anyone wants to make that questionable red-planet real estate sale, maybe they ought to begin with at least making the fantasy version look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the goofiest quirks of the current MCU is how to account for the multiple global disasters, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are mostly not shown in the films themselves; the movies have turned into a alarm clock perpetually set a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that fan sites helpfully explain to be set in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so seem quite unmoored from any concrete sense of time. However the bad stuff is among the weakest Marvel 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 facing a great deal of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, including the related narrative that actually, this nonsensical crap happening in front of us is crucial to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will probably turn out to be accurate.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series 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 timeline approximately 2016. So by the time a pathogen that knocks out the majority of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s merely 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this contagion spreads globally and taking place in 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the real-world pandemic that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; astonishingly, we’re now six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly wounded by the ongoing virus, hasn't been wiped out, and our technology certainly has not been disabled. But this most pessimistic of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a substantial downer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably lead to violent conflict, no matter the efforts of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, even if those instincts are not held by the most. Currently, it feels hard to argue with that, despite the fact that we probably should.

Metropolis

By far 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 city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists lord over the towers as workers work tirelessly below the surface on the equipment that power the city. Rich city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these massive class divisions when he falls for Maria, an underground organizer who preaches a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans builds a robot in her likeness, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a machine created to mimic a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who wants to witness their downfall; it's one element inverted by reality in a future that otherwise appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery depends on old-fashioned manual labor, which seems like a perfect union of rightwing contempt for “unskilled workers” and business enthusiasm for an tech boom. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's simple to picture a somewhat more utilitarian version of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a return to industrial production. The trickier, less plausible accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the poor is bridged with love; not so much with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the possibility