New Year, Familiar Warnings: What Can Films Set in 2026 Teach Us?
The date 2025 might sound more futuristic. Maybe it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 represents one step beyond, a moment where we find ourselves, with every futuristic advancement – chiefly the widespread adoption of AI – seeming bleak, or perhaps more grim. (It often seems 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 answer, particularly regarding science fiction films made long ago (or occasionally months ago) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of those warnings are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but in detail far-fetched (when mankind is inevitably ravaged, we will most likely take the ape population alongside us). Others of them are prescient; others 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 the world's development. Therefore, we shall take a look at some of the films that have been set in 2026 over the years and determine if they contain any lessons to teach us.
Doom
Well, this isn't promising. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can set up a research facility. Now, the negative events – regarding plot and in terms of over-the-top film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually transpire for another 20 years in the future, so should we find a Martian gateway now, we could gain some time to avert catastrophe. If we did discover a portal to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether Elon Musk would remain extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the discovery wasn't something he funded himself, enabling him to assert savior-like credit for humanity's journey to the cosmos. This precedes we even get to the collection of Martian chromosomes and resulting transformations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for why, exactly we allow Mars become a long-term hope for mankind. Whether in John Carpenter's chintzy 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 rarely serve as a beacon of optimism. If anyone wants to make that questionable red-planet real estate sale, maybe they should start with first ensuring the fantasy version look good.
The Marvel Dregs
One of the strangest features of the current MCU is how to account for the multiple world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose events are mostly not shown in the movies themselves; the films have become like a alarm clock perpetually set a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of MCU content that fan sites helpfully explain to be set in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated romp *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so feel quite detached from any concrete sense of time. But the bad stuff is among the weakest Marvel has ever produced: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're facing a whole lot of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, including the accompanying narrative that in truth, this nonsensical crap happening in front of us is essential to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that assertion will likely turn out to be accurate.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
The majority of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the more distant future of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, starting its chronology approximately 2016. Thus, when a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and also enhanced the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s only 2026, with further human indignities (and simian triumphs) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this virus propagates globally and taking place around 2019, looks downright eerie in the aftermath of the actual pandemic that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; astonishingly, we’re already six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though obviously wounded by the ongoing virus, hasn't been annihilated, and our technology certainly hasn't been knocked out. Yet this most pessimistic of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a substantial downer to offer, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably result in warfare, regardless of the efforts of the best-intentioned among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, even if those instincts are not held by the majority. Currently, it seems hard to argue with that, despite the fact that we ought to try.
The Silent Classic
By far the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing celebrating its 100th anniversary. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where rich businessmen preside over the towers as laborers toil below the surface on the equipment that keep everything running. Rich city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground organizer who advocates for 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 to ruin. In this narrative, a machine created to mimic a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who desires to see them destroyed; it's one element inverted by reality in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology relies on traditional manual labor, which appears as a perfect fusion of rightwing disdain for “the working class” and corporate zeal for an AI bubble. 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 promise of a resurgence to manufacturing. The more complex, less plausible feat is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the poor is bridged with compassion; rather than with concrete reforms. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the possibility
