New Year, Familiar Cautionary Tales: Lessons from Films Placed in 2026 Show Us?

The date 2025 could appear more futuristic. Maybe it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 represents one step beyond, a moment where we currently stand, with each science-fiction-style development – primarily the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – appearing dystopian, or perhaps more grim. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed anti-human technology might operate more effectively?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm regarding this?

The response, at least concerning our sci-fi movies made long ago (or sometimes months ago) set in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of these prophecies are broadly applicable (global catastrophe) but in detail implausible (when mankind is inevitably ravaged, we will most likely take the primate species with us). Some of them are visionary; the rest just resemble bad green screen. But it's worth examining where different film-makers, ranging from masters to grunts, believed we'd be positioned by now in the world's development. Therefore, we shall examine a selection of the films that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and see if they contain any lessons to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this doesn't bode well. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to set up a scientific outpost. Currently, the bad stuff – in terms of plot and concerning garish 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 this year, we might have a respite to avoid true disaster. If we did discover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether Elon Musk would remain extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the portal was not a thing he funded himself, enabling him to assert savior-like ownership for humanity's expansion into the stars. That's before we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting mutations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for why, exactly we allow Mars serve as a long-term aspiration 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 mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to act as a beacon of hope. If anyone wants to make that questionable red-planet real estate sale, perhaps they ought to begin with at least ensuring the fantasy version look good.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the strangest features of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the various world-threatening disasters, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are mostly undepicted in the films themselves; the films have turned into a alarm clock perpetually set a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. So there's a large assortment of Marvel stuff that various wikis helpfully explain to be taking place in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, take place distant from Earth, and so feel pretty unmoored from any concrete sense of time. But the bad stuff is among the weakest Marvel has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're in for a great deal of annoying stagnation in 2026, including the related narrative that in truth, this nonsensical crap happening in front of us is essential to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will probably prove accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the more distant future of Earth, but the new trilogy that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, initiating its chronology around 2016. So by the time a pathogen that devastates the majority of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and simultaneously enhanced the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s merely 2026, with additional human indignities (and simian triumphs) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this contagion propagates globally and set in 2019, appears downright eerie in the wake of the real-world global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; astonishingly, we’re now six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though clearly wounded by the still-spreading virus, was not wiped out, and our technology certainly hasn't been knocked out. But this most pessimistic of the four modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a significant downer to offer, implying that human and/or ape nature, however one defines either, will inevitably result in violent conflict, regardless of the work of the best-intentioned among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, although those instincts don't represent the most. Currently, it feels difficult to argue with that, despite the fact that we probably should.

Metropolis

Easily the best-known depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing marking its 100th anniversary. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists lord over the towers as laborers work tirelessly underground on the machines that power the city. Affluent city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these enormous social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean activist who advocates for a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans builds a automaton in her likeness, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. Here, a robot created to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but someone 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 old-fashioned manual labor, which appears as a most logical fusion of rightwing disdain for “the working class” and business zeal for an tech boom. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's simple to picture a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a return to manufacturing. The more complex, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the have-nots is bridged with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the chance