Fresh Start, Old Warnings: Lessons from Films Set in 2026 Teach Us?

The year 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies a leap forward, and it's where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style development – primarily the broad integration of artificial intelligence – appearing bleak, or perhaps more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed anti-human technology would actually function more effectively?) Did no one warn us about this?

The answer, at least regarding our sci-fi movies made long ago (or occasionally recently) set in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail implausible (if humanity is inevitably ravaged, we will most likely take the ape population alongside us). Others of them are prescient; others just look like bad visual effects. But it's valuable to explore where different directors, ranging from masters to grunts, thought we'd be positioned by now in our planet's development. So let's take a look at some of the films that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and determine if they have anything to impart.

Doom

Now, this isn't promising. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to establish a research facility. Currently, the bad stuff – regarding narrative and concerning over-the-top film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually go down for another 20 years later, so should we do discover a Martian gateway now, we might have some time to avoid catastrophe. Were we to uncover a passageway 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 instantly become dejected that the discovery wasn't something he personally paid for, enabling him to assert messianic credit for mankind's journey into the stars. That's before we even get to the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting transformations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for the reasons we allow Mars become a long-term hope for humanity. Be it in John Carpenter's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to serve as a beacon of optimism. If anyone wants to close that dubious red-planet real estate sale, perhaps they ought to begin with at least ensuring the fictional depiction appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the goofiest quirks of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the various world-threatening disasters, including a half-decade leap whose events are mostly not shown in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a alarm clock perpetually running a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's years. So there's a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that various wikis clarify to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so seem quite detached from any concrete sense of time. But the poorer material is some of the worst Marvel has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by this stuff, we're facing a whole lot of frustrating stagnation in 2026, along with the related spin that actually, this confusing mess unfolding in front of us is crucial to future events. Even worse, in the real world that assertion will likely turn out to be correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, initiating its timeline around 2016. So by the time a pathogen that knocks out the majority of Earth’s people has done its damage, and simultaneously boosted the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s merely 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this contagion propagates around the world and taking place in 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual pandemic 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 spread of Covid-19, and society, though clearly wounded by the ongoing virus, hasn't been wiped out, and our technology certainly hasn't been knocked out. Yet this most pessimistic of the four modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a significant downer in store, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will unavoidably lead to violent conflict, regardless of the efforts of the best-intentioned among us. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, although those drives don't represent the majority. Right now, it feels difficult to dispute that, despite the fact that we probably should.

The Silent Classic

Easily the best-known depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to marking its centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where rich businessmen preside over the skyscrapers as laborers toil underground on the machines that power the city. Rich city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these enormous class divisions when he falls for Maria, an underground organizer who advocates for a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans creates a automaton in her likeness, aiming to bring 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 desires to see them destroyed; it's a component inverted by reality in a future that otherwise appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology depends on traditional human toil, which seems like a perfect union of rightwing contempt for “the working class” and business zeal for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's easy to imagine a somewhat less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a resurgence to industrial production. The more complex, less plausible feat is the ending of the film, where the gap between the haves and the poor is spanned with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the possibility