Fresh Start, 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 letter "f" in "five". But 2026 represents one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style advancement – chiefly the broad integration of artificial intelligence – appearing dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed dehumanizing technology might function more effectively?) Did no one warn us regarding this?

The answer, particularly regarding our sci-fi movies from years ago (or occasionally recently) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of those warnings are broadly applicable (global catastrophe) but specifically implausible (when mankind is inevitably ravaged, we will almost certainly take the ape population alongside us). Some of them are visionary; the rest just look like bad green screen. Yet it remains worth examining where different directors, from geniuses to journeymen, thought we'd be positioned by this time in our planet's evolution. Therefore, we shall examine a selection of the films that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they have anything to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to set up a scientific outpost. Currently, the negative events – in terms of plot and concerning over-the-top film versions of a FPS video game – does not actually transpire for two more decades in the future, so even if we do discover a portal to Mars this year, we might have a respite to avert catastrophe. If we did discover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would remain super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the discovery was not a thing he personally paid for, allowing him to claim savior-like ownership for humanity's journey to the cosmos. That's before we consider the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting transformations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is closer to 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 serve as a long-term hope for mankind. Be it in John Carpenter's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely act as a beacon of hope. Should someone wishes to make that dubious Martian real estate sale, maybe they ought to begin with first making the fictional depiction look good.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the strangest features of the present MCU is the way it handles the various global disasters, including a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are mostly not shown in the movies themselves; the films have become like a alarm clock constantly set a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of Marvel stuff that various wikis clarify to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so feel quite detached from our sense of time. But the bad stuff is among the weakest 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 in for a whole lot of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, including the related narrative that in truth, this nonsensical crap happening in front of us is crucial to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that assertion will probably prove correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle 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* starts nearer the present, starting its chronology around 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and also enhanced the intelligence of apes, it’s merely 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this contagion propagates globally and taking place around 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual pandemic that would begin 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 obviously impacted by the still-spreading virus, was not wiped out, and technological infrastructure definitely hasn't been knocked out. Yet this most pessimistic of the four modern *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a substantial bummer to offer, implying that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as either, will inevitably result in warfare, no matter the work of the most well-meaning among us. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, even if those drives don't represent the most. Currently, it feels difficult to argue with that, even though we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

Easily the most prominent depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to marking its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where rich businessmen lord over the towers as laborers work tirelessly below the surface on the equipment that power the city. Affluent surface resident Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these massive social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean organizer who advocates for a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans builds a automaton 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 reality in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery depends on old-fashioned manual labor, which seems like 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 imagine a somewhat more utilitarian version of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a return to manufacturing. The trickier, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the haves and the poor is bridged with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the possibility