New Year, Old Cautionary Tales: Lessons from Films Set in 2026 Teach Us?
The year 2025 might sound more futuristic. Perhaps it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with each science-fiction-style advancement – chiefly the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – appearing dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed anti-human technology would actually operate a bit better?) Did no one sound the alarm about this?
The response, at least regarding our sci-fi movies made long ago (or occasionally recently) set in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of those warnings are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but specifically implausible (when mankind is ultimately ravaged, we will almost certainly bring down the primate species with us). Some of them are prescient; the rest just look like poor visual effects. But it's worth examining where different film-makers, from geniuses to grunts, thought we'd be positioned by now in our planet's development. Therefore, we shall take a look a selection of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they have anything to teach us.
The Game 'Doom'
Well, this isn't promising. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to set up a research facility. Currently, the bad stuff – regarding plot and in terms of over-the-top cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually transpire for two more decades later, so even if we do discover a Martian gateway now, we might have a respite to avoid catastrophe. Were we to uncover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would still be extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the discovery was not a thing he personally paid for, enabling him to claim savior-like credit for humanity's expansion into the stars. This precedes we consider the collection of Martian chromosomes and subsequent transformations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is closer to 2046, not to be confused with the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for why, exactly we allow Mars become a stretch-goal aspiration for humanity. Whether in John Carpenter's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely act as a beacon of optimism. Should someone wishes to close that dubious red-planet property deal, maybe they should start with at least making the fantasy version appear appealing.
The Marvel Dregs
One of the strangest features of the present MCU is how to account for the multiple global cataclysms, including a half-decade leap whose events are largely not shown in the films themselves; the movies have become like a clock radio constantly set a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. So there's a large assortment 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 underrated adventure *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so feel quite unmoored from our sense of time. But the poorer material is some of the worst the studio has ever produced: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're facing a great deal of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, including the accompanying narrative that in truth, this confusing mess happening before our eyes is essential to future events. More troublingly, in the real world that assertion will probably prove correct.
The Apes Saga Continues
Most of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the further-flung future 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 approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that devastates the majority of Earth’s people has done its damage, and simultaneously boosted the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s only 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this contagion spreads globally and set around 2019, appears downright eerie in the wake of the real-world global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; astonishingly, we’re already half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though obviously impacted by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been annihilated, and technological infrastructure definitely hasn't been knocked out. Yet this most pessimistic of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a substantial downer in store, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably result in warfare, regardless of the work of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, even if those drives are not held by the most. Right now, it feels hard to dispute that, even though we probably should.
Metropolis
Easily the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie close to celebrating its 100th anniversary. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists preside over the skyscrapers as laborers work tirelessly below the surface on the equipment that power the city. Affluent surface resident Freder, son of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these massive social gaps when he falls for Maria, an subterranean organizer who preaches a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans creates a automaton in her image, hoping to bring the entire Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a robot designed to mimic a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who desires to see them destroyed; it's one element inverted by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology relies on old-fashioned manual labor, which appears as a perfect fusion of conservative contempt for “unskilled workers” and business enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's easy to picture a somewhat more utilitarian version of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a resurgence to industrial production. The more complex, less plausible accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is bridged with love; not so much with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the possibility
