Fresh Start, Familiar Warnings: Lessons from Films Set in 2026 Teach Us?
The year 2025 might sound more futuristic. Perhaps it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 represents a leap forward, a moment where we find ourselves, with every science-fiction-style advancement – primarily the broad integration of AI – appearing dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored anti-human technology might operate a bit better?) Didn't anyone warn us regarding this?
The answer, particularly regarding science fiction films from years ago (or sometimes recently) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail implausible (if humanity is ultimately decimated, we will most likely take the primate species with us). Some of them are visionary; the rest just resemble poor visual effects. But it's valuable to explore where different directors, ranging from masters to grunts, believed we'd be situated by this time in the world's development. So let's take a look a selection of the movies that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they have anything to teach us.
Doom
Well, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth can set up a research facility. Now, the negative events – regarding plot and concerning over-the-top cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really transpire for two more decades later, so even if we find a Martian gateway this year, we could gain a respite to avoid catastrophe. Were we to discover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether Elon Musk would still be extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the portal wasn't something he personally paid for, enabling him to assert savior-like ownership for humanity's expansion into the stars. That's before we even get to the collection of Martian chromosomes and subsequent mutations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for the reasons we let Mars become a long-term hope for mankind. Be it in the director's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely serve as a beacon of optimism. If anyone wants to close that dubious red-planet property deal, perhaps they should start with at least making the fantasy version look good.
The Marvel Dregs
A of the strangest features of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the various world-threatening cataclysms, including a half-decade leap whose events are largely undepicted in the movies themselves; the films have turned into a clock radio perpetually running a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. So there's a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that various wikis helpfully explain to be set 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 feel pretty unmoored from any concrete 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 farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're facing a great deal of frustrating stagnation in 2026, along with the related spin that in truth, this confusing mess happening in front of us is crucial to future events. Even worse, in the real world that claim will likely turn out to be accurate.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
The majority of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, initiating its timeline approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out the majority of Earth’s human population has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s merely 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this virus spreads globally and set in 2019, looks downright eerie in the wake of the actual global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; astonishingly, we’re now half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though obviously wounded by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been wiped out, and technological infrastructure definitely has not been disabled. But this bleakest of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a substantial bummer in store, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably lead to violent conflict, regardless of the efforts of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, although those instincts don't represent the most. Right now, it feels hard to dispute that, despite the fact that we ought to try.
Metropolis
By far the most prominent depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to celebrating its centennial. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists lord 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 perspective changed to these massive class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground organizer who preaches a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans builds a robot in her image, aiming to bring the whole of Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a robot designed to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who desires to see them destroyed; it's a component inverted by the modern world in a future that in other ways appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery depends on old-fashioned manual labor, which appears as a most logical fusion of conservative disdain for “the working class” and business enthusiasm for an tech boom. It has not yet materialized, but it's simple to imagine a somewhat less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a return to manufacturing. The more complex, less plausible accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the have-nots is spanned with love; rather than with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the possibility
