Here’s how science fiction novels and movies imagined the year 2026. Science fiction vs reality: what actually happened?
Warning! This post contains spoilers.
Stranded [2013 Science Fiction Horror film]
Stranded is a 2013 science fiction horror film directed and co-written by Roger Christian and Christian Piers Betley. The film stars Christian Slater, Brendan Fehr, Amy Matysio, and Michael Therriault.
Set in a future where humanity operates from world mining installations, the story follows four astronauts stationed at the isolated lunar mining base Ark. After a meteor storm damages the base, astronaut Ava Cameron discovers strange spores inside one of the fragments and brings them back for study. What begins as a routine scientific investigation quickly turns into a survival nightmare.
The spores prove to be a rapidly evolving alien life form. Ava becomes infected and experiences a horrifying, accelerated pregnancy, giving birth to a shapeshifting organism that soon escapes confinement. The alien is capable of mimicking human form, killing crew members, and taking their appearance, which leads to paranoia, isolation, and escalating violence inside the sealed base.
As the situation deteriorates, the surviving astronauts attempt to destroy the creature using fragmented notes left behind by a dead crew member. Their plans repeatedly fail as the alien adapts to hostile conditions, including low oxygen and rising carbon monoxide levels. The base becomes increasingly uninhabitable, forcing the survivors to gamble on escape pods and emergency rescue.
Although a rescue ship finally arrives, the film ends on a grim note. The alien reaches Earth ahead of them and continues to evolve, suggesting that humanity’s expansion into space in 2026 carries catastrophic biological risks it is not prepared to face.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes [2014 American science fiction action film]
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes imagines the year 2026 as a near future shaped by global collapse and fragile survival. Set ten years after the Simian Flu pandemic nearly wiped out humanity, the film portrays a world where only a tiny fraction of humans remain immune, while genetically enhanced apes have risen as a new dominant species.
Led by Caesar, an intelligent and disciplined ape leader, the apes have formed a structured society in the forests near San Francisco. When human survivors attempt to restore electricity using a nearby hydroelectric dam, a tense but hopeful truce briefly forms between the two species. Cooperation proves possible, but mistrust, fear, and past trauma undermine it.
The conflict escalates through the actions of Koba, an ape radicalized by human cruelty, who frames humans for violence and ignites open war. By the film’s end, 2026 is depicted as a turning point where reconciliation fails, and a full-scale human-ape war becomes inevitable.
Sword Art Online the Movie: Ordinal Scale [2017 Japanese animated science fiction action adventure film]
Sword Art Online the Movie: Ordinal Scale presents the year 2026 as a world where augmented reality gaming has become mainstream. Set between the second and third seasons of the anime, the film imagines a near future in which the Augma device overlays digital gameplay onto the real world, replacing full dive virtual reality with always-conscious immersion.
The popular AR game Ordinal Scale ranks players by real-world physical performance, pushing former Sword Art Online survivors back into combat. When familiar Aincrad bosses reappear, players begin suffering unexplained memory loss. Asuna herself becomes a victim, triggering Kirito’s investigation.
The truth reveals a darker vision of 2026. Augmented reality technology is being used to harvest memories from SAO survivors in an attempt to reconstruct a dead girl as an artificial intelligence. The film ultimately portrays 2026 as a technological crossroads, where entertainment, surveillance, and identity dangerously overlap, and where emotional loss drives ethically catastrophic innovation.
Does Metropolis take place in 2026?
Short answer: No. Metropolis (1927 film) does not take place in 2026.
One of the most persistent myths surrounding Metropolis is the claim that the film takes place in the year 2026. This date appears frequently in articles, videos, and casual references, especially in recent years. However, it is important to be clear from the start: Metropolis does not take place in 2026, and the film itself never specifies any calendar year at all.
The origin of this misunderstanding lies not in Fritz Lang’s original vision, but in the film’s unusually complex release and restoration history. The screenplay went through numerous rewrites during production, and Lang was never interested in anchoring the story to a precise future date. His aim was symbolic rather than predictive. The city of Metropolis was designed as a warning, a timeless projection of industrial society taken to its extreme, not a forecast tied to a particular year.
In fact, the original 1927 German release contains no date in its title cards. This absence was confirmed definitively with the 2010 restoration, which reconstructed the film using original scripts and intertitles written by Thea von Harbou. Once these materials were restored, it became clear that the setting was intentionally left open.
So where does 2026 come from? The answer lies in later reinterpretations. In the 1980s, composer Giorgio Moroder released a heavily re-edited and re-scored version of Metropolis. This version included a newly added opening title card stating that the story takes place in 2026. That date was Moroder’s own creative choice, not something inherited from Lang or the original film. Because Moroder’s version was widely distributed on home video and television, many viewers encountered Metropolis for the first time with this artificial date attached.
Earlier and later alterations added further confusion. Paramount’s original US release claimed the story took place in the year 3000, while some film historians informally suggested a setting around the year 2000 based on the film’s technological imagination. None of these dates appear in the original film.
So, what year does Metropolis take place in?
Today, film historians generally agree on the conclusion: Metropolis is deliberately undated. Assigning it to 2026, or any other year, reflects later marketing decisions and artistic reinterpretations rather than the intent of the filmmakers.
Related: The Year 2025 in Science Fiction
Sources
- List of films set in the future on Wikipedia
- Metropolis (1927 film) on Wikipedia
- Stranded (2013 film) on Wikipedia
- Dawn of the Planet of the Apes on Wikipedia
