New Year, Old Warnings: What Can Films Set in 2026 Teach Us?
The year 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies a leap forward, and it's where we currently stand, with each science-fiction-style development – chiefly the widespread adoption of AI – seeming bleak, or perhaps more grim. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed anti-human technology might function a bit better?) Did no one warn us about this?
The response, particularly regarding science fiction films from years ago (or sometimes months ago) set in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of these prophecies are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (when mankind is ultimately ravaged, we will almost certainly take the ape population alongside us). Some of them are prescient; the rest just look like bad green screen. But it's worth examining where various film-makers, ranging from masters to grunts, thought we'd be situated by now in our planet's development. Therefore, we shall examine at some of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they contain any lessons to teach us.
The Game 'Doom'
Now, this isn't promising. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary 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 are able to set up a scientific outpost. Currently, the bad stuff – in terms of plot and concerning garish film versions of a FPS video game – does not actually transpire for another 20 years later, so even if we find a Martian gateway now, we might have a respite to avoid catastrophe. If we did uncover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would still be super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the discovery wasn't something he personally paid for, enabling him to claim messianic ownership for mankind's expansion to the cosmos. That's before we consider the collection of Martian chromosomes and subsequent mutations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for why, exactly we let Mars become a long-term hope for humanity. Be it in John Carpenter's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely act as a symbol of optimism. If anyone wishes to make that dubious Martian real estate sale, perhaps they should start with at least making the fantasy version appear appealing.
Marvel's Lesser Offerings
One of the goofiest quirks of the current MCU is how to account for the various global disasters, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are largely undepicted in the films themselves; the films have turned into a alarm clock constantly set a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. So there's a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that fan sites clarify to be set in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so feel pretty detached from our sense of time. However the bad stuff is some of the worst Marvel has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're in for a whole lot of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the accompanying spin that actually, this confusing mess happening before our eyes is crucial to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will probably prove correct.
The Apes Saga Continues
The majority of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, starting its chronology around 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that devastates most of Earth’s people has done its damage, and simultaneously boosted the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s only 2026, with further human indignities (and simian triumphs) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this virus spreads globally and taking place in 2019, looks downright eerie in the aftermath of the actual global health crisis that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re already six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly wounded by the ongoing virus, was not annihilated, and technological infrastructure certainly hasn't been disabled. But this bleakest of the four modern *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a substantial downer to offer, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will unavoidably lead to warfare, no matter the efforts of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, although those drives don't represent the most. Currently, it feels hard to dispute that, despite the fact that we probably should.
The Silent Classic
Easily the best-known depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing marking its 100th anniversary. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where wealthy industrialists preside over the skyscrapers as laborers work tirelessly underground on the machines that power the city. Affluent city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these massive class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground organizer who advocates for a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans builds a robot in her likeness, hoping to tear the entire Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a robot created to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who wants to witness their downfall; it's one element inverted by reality in a future that otherwise seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology depends on traditional human toil, which appears as a most logical union of rightwing contempt for “the working class” and corporate enthusiasm for an tech boom. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's easy to picture a slightly less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a return to industrial production. The trickier, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the have-nots is bridged with love; not so much with concrete reforms. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the chance
