Fresh Start, Familiar Cautionary Tales: Lessons from Films Placed in 2026 Teach Us?

The date 2025 could appear more futuristic. Maybe it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies one step beyond, a moment where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style development – chiefly the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – appearing dystopian, or perhaps more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed anti-human technology would actually function more effectively?) Did no one sound the alarm about this?

The response, at least regarding our sci-fi movies from years ago (or sometimes months ago) set in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of those warnings are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably ravaged, we will almost certainly take the primate species alongside us). Others of them are visionary; others just look like bad green screen. Yet it remains valuable to explore where various film-makers, from geniuses to grunts, thought we'd be situated by this time in the world's development. So let's take a look at some of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they have anything to teach us.

Doom

Now, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to set up a scientific outpost. Currently, the bad stuff – regarding plot and concerning garish film versions of a FPS video game – does not actually go down for another 20 years later, so even if we do discover a Martian gateway this year, we could gain a respite to avert true disaster. Were we to discover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult 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 assert messianic ownership for mankind's journey into the stars. This precedes we even get to the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent transformations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for why, exactly we allow Mars become a long-term hope for humanity. Be it in John Carpenter's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to act as a symbol of hope. If anyone wants to make that dubious Martian real estate sale, perhaps they ought to begin with first making the fictional depiction look good.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the goofiest quirks of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the multiple world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a half-decade leap whose events are mostly undepicted in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a alarm clock constantly set a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch 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 romp *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so feel pretty detached from our sense of time. However the poorer material is some of the worst the studio has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're facing a whole lot of annoying stagnation in 2026, including the related spin that in truth, this confusing mess happening before our eyes is crucial to future events. Even worse, in the real world that assertion will probably prove accurate.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the further-flung future of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, initiating its chronology approximately 2016. Thus, when a virus that devastates the majority of Earth’s human population has run its course, and also boosted the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s only 2026, with additional human indignities (and simian triumphs) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this contagion propagates around the world and set in 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the real-world pandemic that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re now six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously impacted by the still-spreading virus, was not annihilated, and our technology certainly hasn't been disabled. But this most pessimistic of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a significant downer in store, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will inevitably result in 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 are not held by the majority. Currently, it seems difficult to argue with that, despite the fact that we probably should.

Metropolis

By far the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing marking its centennial. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen preside over the towers as workers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that keep everything running. Rich surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these massive class divisions when he falls for Maria, an underground activist who advocates for a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans creates a robot in her image, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis to ruin. Here, a robot designed 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 flipped by reality in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery relies on traditional human toil, which seems like a perfect union of conservative contempt for “unskilled workers” and business 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 prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The more complex, less plausible accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the poor is bridged with love; rather than with concrete reforms. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the possibility