Fresh Start, Old Warnings: What Can Films Set in 2026 Teach Us?

The year 2025 might sound more futuristic. Maybe it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies a leap forward, a moment where we currently stand, with each science-fiction-style development – chiefly the broad integration of AI – appearing dystopian, or perhaps more grim. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology would actually operate a bit better?) Didn't anyone warn us about this?

The answer, at least concerning science fiction films made long ago (or sometimes recently) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of those warnings are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but specifically far-fetched (when mankind is inevitably ravaged, we will almost certainly take the primate species alongside us). Some of them are prescient; the rest just look like bad green screen. Yet it remains worth examining where different film-makers, ranging from masters to journeymen, thought we'd be positioned by now in the world's development. So let's take a look at some of the films that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they have anything to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this doesn't bode well. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can set up a scientific outpost. Currently, the negative events – in terms of plot and concerning garish film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really transpire for two more decades in the future, so should we find a Martian gateway this year, we might have some time to avoid catastrophe. Were we to discover a portal to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would remain super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the discovery wasn't something he funded himself, enabling him to assert savior-like ownership for mankind's journey to the cosmos. This precedes we even get to the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent transformations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *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 the director's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely serve as a symbol of optimism. Should someone wishes to make that questionable red-planet property deal, perhaps they ought to begin with at least making the fictional depiction look good.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the strangest features of the current MCU is how to account for the multiple world-threatening disasters, including a half-decade leap whose occurrences are mostly not shown in the films themselves; the films have become like a clock radio perpetually running a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of MCU content that various wikis clarify to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated adventure *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so seem pretty detached from our sense of time. However the poorer material is some of the worst Marvel has ever produced: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're facing a great deal of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, including the related spin that in truth, this nonsensical crap happening in front of us is essential to future events. Even worse, 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 new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, initiating its chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a pathogen that knocks out most of Earth’s people has done its damage, and also boosted the intelligence of apes, it’s merely 2026, with further human indignities (and simian triumphs) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this contagion spreads around the world and taking place in 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the real-world global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; if you can believe it, we’re already six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly impacted by the still-spreading virus, was not wiped out, and technological infrastructure definitely hasn't been disabled. But this bleakest of the four modern *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a substantial downer to offer, suggesting that human and/or ape nature, however one defines each, will inevitably result in violent conflict, regardless of the work of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, even if those instincts are not held by the majority. Right now, it feels difficult to dispute that, despite the fact that we probably should.

Metropolis

Easily the most prominent depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to celebrating its centennial. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists lord over the skyscrapers as laborers toil underground on the equipment that keep everything running. Affluent surface resident Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these enormous class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean organizer who preaches a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans creates a automaton in her image, aiming to bring the entire Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a robot designed to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but someone who desires to witness their downfall; it's one element inverted by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology relies on old-fashioned human toil, which seems like a most logical union of conservative disdain for “the working class” and corporate enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's simple to imagine a slightly more utilitarian version of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a resurgence to industrial production. The trickier, less plausible accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is spanned with love; not so much with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the possibility