New Year, Old Warnings: Lessons from 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 a leap forward, a moment where we currently stand, with every futuristic advancement – chiefly the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – appearing bleak, or perhaps more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed anti-human technology might operate more effectively?) Did no one warn us regarding this?
The response, at least regarding our sci-fi movies from years ago (or sometimes months ago) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of these prophecies are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (when mankind is inevitably decimated, we will almost certainly bring down the ape population with us). Some of them are visionary; the rest just resemble poor green screen. But it's valuable to explore where different film-makers, from geniuses to journeymen, thought we'd be situated by now in the world's development. Therefore, we shall examine a selection of the films that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they contain any lessons to teach us.
The Game 'Doom'
Well, this isn't promising. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – in terms of plot and concerning over-the-top film versions of a FPS video game – doesn't really go down for another 20 years in the future, so should we find a Martian gateway now, we might have a respite to avert catastrophe. If we did discover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether Elon Musk would remain super-psyched 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 messianic credit for mankind's journey to the cosmos. This precedes we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent mutations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a good test case for why, exactly we allow Mars become a stretch-goal hope for mankind. Be it in John Carpenter's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely act as a symbol of optimism. Should someone wants to make that questionable red-planet real estate sale, maybe they should start with at least ensuring the fictional depiction appear appealing.
The Marvel Dregs
A of the strangest features of the current MCU is the way it handles the various global disasters, including a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are mostly undepicted in the movies themselves; the movies have turned into a clock radio perpetually running a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's years. So there's a large assortment of Marvel stuff that fan sites clarify to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated romp *The Marvels*, take place distant from Earth, and so seem pretty detached from our sense of time. But the poorer material is some of the worst Marvel has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're in for a whole lot of annoying stagnation in 2026, along with the related narrative that actually, this nonsensical crap unfolding in front of us is essential to future events. More troublingly, in the actual world that claim will probably turn out to be accurate.
The Apes Saga Continues
Most of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the further-flung future of Earth, but the new trilogy that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, initiating its chronology around 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that knocks out most of Earth’s people has done its damage, and simultaneously boosted the intelligence of primates, it’s merely 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this virus spreads globally and set in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the wake of the real-world global health crisis that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; astonishingly, we’re now half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly impacted by the ongoing virus, was not wiped out, and our technology certainly hasn't been knocked out. But this bleakest of the four modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a substantial bummer to offer, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines each, will inevitably lead to warfare, regardless of the work of the best-intentioned among us. We’re at the mercy 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 ought to try.
The Silent Classic
Easily the best-known depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to marking its centennial. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen lord over the towers as workers toil underground on the machines that power the city. Rich city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these enormous class divisions when he falls for Maria, an subterranean activist who advocates for a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans creates a robot in her likeness, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. Here, a machine designed to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but someone who desires to witness their downfall; it's one element inverted by reality in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery depends on traditional manual labor, which seems like a perfect fusion of rightwing contempt for “unskilled workers” and corporate enthusiasm for an tech boom. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's simple to picture a somewhat less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a return to manufacturing. The trickier, 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 specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the possibility
