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

The year 2025 might sound more futuristic. Perhaps it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies one step beyond, a moment where we currently stand, with each science-fiction-style development – primarily the widespread adoption of AI – appearing dystopian, or possibly more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored anti-human technology might function a bit better?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm regarding this?

The response, particularly regarding science fiction films from years ago (or sometimes recently) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of those warnings are broadly applicable (global catastrophe) but in detail far-fetched (when mankind is inevitably ravaged, we will most likely bring down the primate species alongside us). Some of them are prescient; others just look like poor green screen. But it's valuable to explore where different directors, ranging from masters to journeymen, thought we'd be situated by this time in our planet's development. Therefore, we shall take a look a selection of the films that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they have anything to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this doesn't bode well. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can establish a scientific outpost. Now, the bad stuff – regarding plot and concerning garish film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really transpire for two more decades in the future, so should we find a portal to Mars now, we might have a respite to avoid catastrophe. If we did discover a portal to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether Elon Musk would remain super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the discovery wasn't something he personally paid for, enabling him to assert savior-like credit for mankind's expansion to the cosmos. That's before we even get to the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent mutations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for the reasons we allow Mars serve as a long-term hope for humanity. Whether in the director's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to act as a beacon of hope. Should someone wishes to make that questionable Martian real estate sale, maybe they should start with at least making the fantasy version look good.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the goofiest quirks of the present MCU is the way it handles the multiple global cataclysms, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are largely not shown in the films themselves; the films have turned into a alarm clock perpetually set a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of Marvel stuff that various wikis clarify to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated romp *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so seem pretty detached from any concrete sense of time. But the bad stuff is among the weakest Marvel has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on this stuff, we're facing a whole lot of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the accompanying narrative that actually, this nonsensical crap happening in front of us is essential to future events. More troublingly, in the real world that assertion will likely prove accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the more distant future of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, starting its timeline around 2016. So by the time a virus that devastates most of Earth’s people has done its damage, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of apes, it’s merely 2026, with further human indignities (and simian triumphs) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this contagion propagates globally and set in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the real-world pandemic that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; if you can believe it, we’re now six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though clearly wounded by the ongoing virus, was not wiped out, and technological infrastructure certainly has not been knocked out. But this most pessimistic of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a significant downer in store, suggesting that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as each, will unavoidably lead to warfare, regardless of the work of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, even if those instincts are not held by the most. Right now, it feels hard to dispute that, despite the fact that we probably should.

Metropolis

By far the best-known depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where rich businessmen lord over the towers as laborers toil underground on the equipment 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 becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean organizer who preaches a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans creates a robot in her likeness, aiming to bring the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a robot created to imitate a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who wants to witness their downfall; it's a component flipped by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery relies on traditional manual labor, which seems like a perfect union of conservative disdain for “the working class” and business zeal for an AI bubble. It has not yet come to pass, but it's simple to picture 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 accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the haves and the poor is bridged with compassion; not so much with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the chance