Fresh Start, Familiar Warnings: Lessons from Films Set in 2026 Show Us?

The year 2025 could appear more futuristic. Perhaps it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies one step beyond, a moment where we find ourselves, with each science-fiction-style advancement – primarily the broad integration of AI – appearing dystopian, or possibly more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology might function a bit better?) Did no one sound the alarm regarding this?

The answer, at least regarding our sci-fi movies made long ago (or sometimes recently) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of these prophecies are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but in detail implausible (if humanity is inevitably decimated, we will almost certainly take the ape population with us). Others of them are prescient; the rest just resemble bad green screen. Yet it remains valuable to explore where different directors, ranging from masters to journeymen, thought we'd be positioned by now in our planet's evolution. Therefore, we shall examine a selection of the films that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they contain any lessons to impart.

Doom

Now, this isn't promising. According to the game-to-film translation *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 people of Earth can establish a research facility. Currently, the negative events – in terms of narrative and concerning garish cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really transpire for two more decades later, so should we do discover a portal to Mars now, we could gain some time to avoid catastrophe. If we did discover a portal to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether Elon Musk would remain super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the discovery wasn't something he funded himself, allowing him to assert savior-like credit for humanity's journey to the cosmos. This precedes we even get to the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and subsequent mutations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a good test case for why, exactly we let Mars become a long-term hope for mankind. Whether in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely act as a symbol of hope. If anyone wants to close that dubious Martian real estate sale, maybe they ought to begin with at least ensuring the fantasy version appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the goofiest quirks of the current MCU is the way it handles the multiple global cataclysms, including a half-decade leap whose occurrences are largely undepicted in the movies themselves; the movies have turned into a clock radio perpetually set a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of Marvel stuff that various wikis clarify to be set in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so seem pretty unmoored from our sense of time. However the bad stuff is some of the worst the studio has created: the nonsensically meandering 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 frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the related narrative that in truth, this confusing mess unfolding in front of us is essential to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the real world that assertion will probably turn out to be correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, initiating its chronology approximately 2016. Thus, when a virus that knocks out the majority of Earth’s people has done its damage, and also boosted the intelligence of primates, it’s only 2026, with additional human indignities (and simian triumphs) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this contagion propagates globally and taking place around 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual global health crisis that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re now six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though clearly wounded by the still-spreading virus, was not annihilated, and our technology certainly hasn't been knocked out. Yet this most pessimistic of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a substantial bummer in store, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably result in warfare, no matter the work of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, although those drives are not held by the majority. Currently, it seems hard to argue with that, even though we ought to try.

Metropolis

By far the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to celebrating its centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where rich businessmen lord over the towers as laborers work tirelessly underground on the equipment that keep everything running. Rich surface resident Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean activist who advocates for a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans creates a robot in her image, hoping to tear the entire Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a machine designed to mimic a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who wants to see them destroyed; it's one element flipped by the modern world in a future that otherwise seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology depends on old-fashioned manual labor, which seems like a most logical union of conservative disdain for “unskilled workers” and business enthusiasm for an tech boom. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's simple to picture a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a return to manufacturing. The more complex, less plausible feat is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the have-nots 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 optimistic about the possibility