Fresh Start, Old Warnings: What Can Films Placed in 2026 Show Us?

The date 2025 might sound more futuristic. Perhaps it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 represents one step beyond, a moment where we find ourselves, with every futuristic development – primarily the broad integration of AI – appearing bleak, or possibly even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed anti-human technology would actually operate more effectively?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm regarding this?

The response, particularly regarding science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally months ago) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of those warnings are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but specifically far-fetched (when mankind is ultimately ravaged, we will almost certainly take the ape population with us). Others of them are visionary; the rest just look like bad visual effects. Yet it remains valuable to explore where different film-makers, ranging from masters to journeymen, believed we'd be situated by this time in our planet's development. So let's examine a selection of the films that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and determine if they have anything to teach us.

Doom

Now, this doesn't bode well. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can set up a scientific outpost. Now, the bad stuff – in terms of narrative and concerning garish cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – doesn't really transpire for two more decades later, so should we do discover a Martian gateway now, we might have a respite to avert catastrophe. Were we to discover a portal to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether Elon Musk would remain super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the portal wasn't something he funded himself, allowing him to assert messianic credit for humanity's journey to the cosmos. This precedes we even get to the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent transformations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is closer to 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for why, exactly we allow Mars serve as a stretch-goal hope for humanity. Whether in the director's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to act as a beacon of optimism. If anyone wishes to make that questionable Martian property deal, maybe they ought to begin with at least ensuring the fantasy version appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the goofiest quirks of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the various world-threatening disasters, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are mostly undepicted in the films themselves; the films have become like a clock radio perpetually set a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. So there's a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that fan sites helpfully explain to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so seem quite detached from any concrete sense of time. However the poorer material is among the weakest the studio has ever produced: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on this stuff, we're in for a whole lot of annoying stagnation in 2026, including the related narrative that actually, this nonsensical crap happening in front of us is essential to future events. More troublingly, in the real world that claim will probably prove accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the further-flung future of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, initiating its timeline approximately 2016. So by the time a pathogen that devastates most of Earth’s human population has run its course, and simultaneously boosted the intelligence of apes, it’s merely 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this contagion spreads globally and set in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the wake of the actual pandemic that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; if you can believe it, we’re now six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though clearly impacted by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been wiped out, and technological infrastructure definitely has not been disabled. But this most pessimistic of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a significant bummer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines each, will unavoidably result in warfare, regardless of the efforts of the most well-meaning among us. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, even if those instincts don't represent the most. Right now, it feels difficult to argue with that, despite the fact that we probably should.

The Silent Classic

Easily the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie close to celebrating its centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where wealthy industrialists lord over the skyscrapers as workers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that keep everything running. Rich city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these enormous class divisions when he falls for Maria, an subterranean organizer who preaches a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans builds a automaton in her likeness, hoping to bring the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a machine designed to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but someone who desires to witness their downfall; it's one element inverted by reality in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology relies on traditional human toil, which seems like a most logical fusion of conservative contempt for “unskilled workers” and corporate enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's easy to imagine a slightly more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a resurgence to manufacturing. The trickier, less plausible accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is spanned with love; not so much with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the chance