New Year, Old Cautionary Tales: What Can Films Placed in 2026 Teach Us?
The date 2025 might sound more futuristic. Maybe it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies a leap forward, a moment where we find ourselves, with each futuristic advancement – chiefly the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – seeming dystopian, or possibly even worse. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed anti-human technology would actually operate a bit better?) Didn't anyone warn us regarding this?
The response, particularly regarding science fiction films from years ago (or sometimes recently) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of these prophecies are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but in detail implausible (if humanity is ultimately ravaged, we will most likely bring down the primate species alongside us). Others of them are prescient; the rest just look like bad green screen. Yet it remains valuable to explore where various film-makers, ranging from masters to grunts, thought we'd be situated by this time in the world's development. Therefore, we shall examine at some of the movies that have been set in 2026 over the years and determine if they have anything to impart.
The Game 'Doom'
Now, this isn't promising. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can set up a research facility. Currently, the bad stuff – regarding narrative 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 portal to Mars 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 extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the portal was not a thing he funded himself, allowing him to claim messianic credit for mankind's expansion to the cosmos. This precedes we consider the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and resulting mutations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for the reasons we let Mars serve as a long-term hope for mankind. Whether in the director's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely act as a beacon of hope. If anyone wants to close that questionable red-planet property deal, perhaps they should start with at least ensuring the fictional depiction appear appealing.
The Marvel Dregs
One of the strangest features of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the various global cataclysms, including a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are largely undepicted in the films themselves; the movies have become like a clock radio perpetually set a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of MCU content that various wikis helpfully explain to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated adventure *The Marvels*, take place distant from Earth, and so seem pretty detached from our sense of time. But the bad stuff is some of the worst Marvel has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on this stuff, we're facing a whole lot of annoying stagnation in 2026, including the accompanying narrative that actually, this nonsensical crap unfolding in front of us is crucial to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the real world that assertion will likely prove correct.
The Apes Saga Continues
Most of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, starting its timeline around 2016. Thus, when a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s human population has run its course, and also boosted the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s only 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this contagion spreads around the world and set around 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the real-world global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; astonishingly, we’re already six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly wounded by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been annihilated, and technological infrastructure certainly hasn't been disabled. But this most pessimistic of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a substantial bummer to offer, implying that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as either, will inevitably lead to warfare, regardless of the efforts of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, even if those drives don't represent the most. Currently, it feels difficult to argue with that, even though we ought to try.
Metropolis
Easily the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing marking its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists preside over the towers as laborers work tirelessly below the surface on the equipment that power the city. Rich surface resident Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean activist who preaches a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans creates a automaton in her likeness, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a machine designed to imitate 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 otherwise appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology depends on traditional human toil, which seems like a most logical fusion of conservative contempt for “unskilled workers” and corporate zeal for an AI bubble. It has not yet materialized, but it's easy to picture a slightly more utilitarian version of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a resurgence to industrial production. The more complex, less plausible accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the poor is spanned with love; not so much with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the possibility
