Fresh Start, Old Warnings: What Can Films Placed in 2026 Teach Us?
The year 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies a leap forward, a moment where we currently stand, with each science-fiction-style advancement – primarily the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – seeming dystopian, or perhaps more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored anti-human technology would actually function more effectively?) Did no one warn us about this?
The answer, particularly concerning our sci-fi movies made long ago (or sometimes months ago) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of those warnings are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably decimated, we will almost certainly bring down the primate species with us). Others of them are visionary; others just look like poor green screen. But it's valuable to explore where different film-makers, ranging from masters to grunts, believed we'd be situated by this time in our planet's evolution. Therefore, we shall examine a selection of the films that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they contain any lessons to teach us.
The Game 'Doom'
Now, this isn't promising. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can set up a research facility. Currently, the negative events – regarding plot and concerning over-the-top cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – does not actually transpire for another 20 years later, so should we find a Martian gateway now, we might have some time to avert catastrophe. If we did discover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether Elon Musk would still be super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the discovery was not a thing he personally paid for, allowing him to claim savior-like ownership for humanity's expansion into the stars. This precedes we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent mutations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for why, exactly we let Mars serve as a stretch-goal hope for mankind. Be it in the director's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely act as a symbol of optimism. If anyone wants to close that questionable red-planet real estate sale, perhaps they ought to begin with first making the fantasy version appear appealing.
The Marvel Dregs
A of the strangest features of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the multiple world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose events are mostly not shown in the movies themselves; the films have turned into a clock radio perpetually set a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of Marvel stuff that various wikis clarify to be taking place in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so feel quite detached from any concrete sense of time. But the bad stuff 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*. Judging by these examples, we're facing a great deal of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, including the accompanying spin that in truth, this confusing mess happening in front of us is crucial to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that assertion will likely prove accurate.
The Apes Saga Continues
The majority of the original five-film *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* starts nearer the present, initiating its chronology approximately 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that devastates the majority of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and also enhanced the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s merely 2026, with further human indignities (and simian triumphs) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this virus propagates around the world and taking place in 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the wake of the actual pandemic that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; astonishingly, we’re already half a decade 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 knocked out. Yet this bleakest of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a substantial downer to offer, suggesting that human and/or ape nature, however one defines either, will unavoidably result in violent conflict, regardless of the work of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, even if those instincts don't represent the most. Currently, it seems difficult to dispute that, even though we ought to try.
The Silent Classic
By far the best-known portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to celebrating its centennial. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen lord over the towers as laborers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that power the city. Rich city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground activist who advocates for a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans builds a robot in her image, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a machine created to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but an entity who wants to witness their downfall; it's a component flipped by reality in a future that in other ways seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology relies on traditional manual labor, which seems like a most logical union of conservative disdain for “the working class” and business enthusiasm for an tech boom. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's easy to picture a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a return to manufacturing. The trickier, less plausible feat is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the poor is bridged with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the chance
