New Year, Old Warnings: What Can Films Placed in 2026 Show Us?

The year 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies one step beyond, a moment where we find ourselves, with each science-fiction-style development – primarily the broad integration of artificial intelligence – seeming dystopian, or possibly more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored anti-human technology would actually function more effectively?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm about this?

The answer, particularly concerning our sci-fi movies made long ago (or occasionally months ago) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of these prophecies are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but specifically far-fetched (when mankind is ultimately decimated, we will most likely take the primate species alongside us). Some of them are visionary; the rest just resemble bad green screen. Yet it remains worth examining where various film-makers, ranging from masters to grunts, believed we'd be positioned by this time in the world's development. So let's examine a selection of the films that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they have anything to impart.

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 finds a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Now, the bad stuff – regarding narrative and concerning garish film versions of a FPS video game – does not actually transpire for two more decades later, so even if we find a portal to Mars this year, we might have a respite to avoid catastrophe. If we did discover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would still be extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the portal wasn't something he personally paid for, allowing him to claim savior-like credit for mankind's journey to the cosmos. This precedes we consider the collection of Martian chromosomes and resulting mutations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for the reasons we allow Mars become a stretch-goal aspiration for humanity. Be it in the director's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to act as a beacon of hope. If anyone wants to close that dubious Martian property deal, maybe they should start with first making the fictional depiction appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the goofiest quirks of the current MCU is how to account for the various global disasters, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose events are mostly not shown in the films themselves; the films have turned into a clock radio perpetually set a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that various wikis clarify to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated adventure *The Marvels*, take place distant from Earth, and so seem pretty unmoored from our sense of time. But the bad stuff is some of the worst the studio has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by this stuff, we're facing a great deal of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, including the accompanying narrative that actually, this confusing mess happening before our eyes is essential to future events. More troublingly, in the actual world that assertion will likely prove accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is located in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, starting its chronology approximately 2016. Thus, when a virus that knocks out the majority of Earth’s people has done its damage, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of apes, it’s merely 2026, with further human indignities (and simian triumphs) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this contagion spreads around the world and set around 2019, appears downright eerie in the aftermath of the real-world pandemic that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; astonishingly, we’re now six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though clearly impacted by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been wiped out, and technological infrastructure definitely hasn't been disabled. Yet this bleakest of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a substantial bummer to offer, suggesting that human and/or ape nature, however one defines either, will unavoidably lead to violent conflict, regardless of the work of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, even if those drives are not held by the most. Currently, it seems hard to dispute that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

Metropolis

By far the most prominent depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing marking its centennial. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists preside over the skyscrapers as workers work tirelessly underground on the equipment that power the city. Affluent city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these enormous social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground organizer who preaches a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans creates a automaton in her likeness, hoping to bring 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 an entity who desires to see them destroyed; it's one element flipped by the modern world in a future that otherwise appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery depends on old-fashioned human toil, which seems like a most logical fusion of conservative contempt for “the working class” and corporate zeal for an tech boom. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's easy to imagine a somewhat less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a return to manufacturing. The more complex, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the gap 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 pleads for peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the possibility