These 3 Sci-Fi Movies Are Set in 2026: What They Got Right & Wrong

Back to the Future Part II took place and yet we never got hoverboards nor did we ever get Jaws 19 in 3D. Maybe it’s for the best on both counts. Reign of Fire, Edge of Tomorrow, and Real Steel all took place in 2020, yet we never got into a big fight with dragons, nor did we get into a time loop war with aliens or eight-foot-tall Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. Johnny Mnemonic took place in 2021, and Soylent Green took place in 2022, yet we don’t have message implants in couriers and we’ve yet to start eating people as a green wafer, thank goodness. But what about 2026? Are there any moments that came out in the past that take place in this new year? The answer is yes, so the question then becomes whether or not their view of the future was prescient or way off.

Naturally, we didn’t include recently released movies that were set just one to at most three years ahead of their release date. For example, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, Wake Up Dead Man, I Saw the TV Glow, and the MCU adventures Captain America: Brave New World, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and The Marvels. The Final Reckoning is about AI because AI is already a problem, not because it predicted that AI would be a problem.

3) Doom

For the most part, the 2005 Doom movie takes place. But, the discovery of The Ark, which kicks the plot into motion, takes place in 2026.

Suffice to say we haven’t discovered a wormhole portal to Mars buried in the Nevada desert. So, Doom didn’t show anything that came true. But who knows, maybe we’ll get teleportation by 2046. We won’t, but it would be neat.

2) Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Rise of the Planet of the Apes took place between the years of 2008 and 2016. Even in 2016 we still haven’t gotten an ape who stands up slowly and gutturally yells “No!” to Tom Felton. The same goes for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, which takes place 10 years after Rise‘s climax.

Then again, maybe Dawn predict something. After all, it focuses on two groups who are having a mighty hard time finding any common ground. No heroic Caesars or growling Kobas yet, but the whole society becoming entirely adversarial thing is very much present.

Stream Dawn of the Planet of the Apes on Hulu.

1) Metropolis

Released 99 years ago, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis serves as a pretty acute look at a future nearly a century in advance and, quite frankly, it got a ton right. For the most part, the core of its narrative is about the great disparity between the ultra-wealthy one percent and the beaten-down working class.

That’s definitely very much part of the world in which we live, and it’s an issue that hasn’t gotten any better. In fact, it’s going to get worse. But Metropolis is also about what happens if we allow technological growth to run rampant. If AI were asked if that’s a problem, it would probably just reply with a list of things it would like to do if it were human for a day.

Stream Metropolis for free with ads on The Roku Channel.

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