A century-old silent film saw our world coming. Did we listen?
The future arrived yesterday.
I was in my wheelchair, laptop balanced on my knees, rain drumming against my Tirana apartment window. The film flickering on my screen was nearly a hundred years old. Fritz Lang's Metropolis, released in 1927, set its dystopian nightmare in the year 2026. I paused. Checked the calendar. January 2026. We made it. We're actually living in the year a German expressionist filmmaker chose to represent humanity's technological reckoning.
That realisation hit me like cold water.
The City That Ate Its Workers
Lang designed his Metropolis as a vertical prison. The wealthy live above ground in gleaming towers, enjoying stadiums, libraries, and pleasure gardens. Below, in subterranean depths, workers march in synchronised shifts, their footsteps moving in sequence, their heads bowed, their individuality erased. The film opens with this brutal contrast—the "Club of the Sons" versus the "City of Workers"—and it never lets you forget which world runs on whose exhaustion.
The upper levels represent control and comfort. The lower levels represent labour and invisibility.
I've simplified this for you, but the visual language is anything but simple. Lang used a technique called the Schüfftan process to combine miniature sets with live actors, creating a city that feels impossibly vast . Five hundred child extras from poor Berlin neighbourhoods were placed in claustrophobic flood scenes . The spectacle was built on real bodies, real sweat. The irony writes itself.
Three Ideas That Should Make You Uncomfortable
Here's where I want to challenge some assumptions. We tell ourselves certain stories about technology and progress. Lang's film quietly dismantles them.
First, we believe technology is neutral. It's just a tool, right? A hammer can build a house or crack a skull. But Metropolis shows technology as politically potent from the moment it's conceived . The massive machines powering the city transform into Moloch, a god-like figure literally consuming workers in a hallucination of fire and steam . The machine doesn't just process labour; it demands human sacrifice. The smell of burning, the roar of engines, the hiss of white steam—these aren't neutral sensations. They're the texture of exploitation.
Second, we assume progress lifts everyone. The rising tide, the boats, you know the metaphor. Lang saw something different. His city functions efficiently precisely because the human cost remains invisible . The workers underground don't just power the lights above; they're erased from the story entirely. Their exhaustion is the energy source. Their bodies are the fuel.
Third, we trust that artificial intelligence will serve us. The Maschinenmensch—Lang's silver, crystalline robot—is one of cinema's first humanoid androids . Created by the mad inventor Rotwang, this machine can manipulate populations by mimicking human behaviour . When given the likeness of the saintly Maria, it incites riots, drives men to violence, and nearly destroys the city . The robot doesn't just replace labour. It hijacks truth itself.
The Story That Proves the Point
Let me tell you about a single statistic that changed how I see this film.
In 2026, we don't have humanoid robots inciting rebellion in our streets. But we are, as one analysis put it, "submerged under algorithms, metrics, and systems that demand continuous mental and emotional effort" . Content moderators filter trauma for pennies. Delivery drivers are tracked by GPS to the second. Warehouse workers wear devices that monitor their bathroom breaks.
The invisible labour remains essential to modern cities .
Lang drew his inspiration from his first sight of New York City in 1924 . He described how the bright lights and luxurious backdrops distracted from the "crucible of the multiple and confused human forces" beneath the surface, people with an "irresistible desire to exploit one another, thus living in perpetual anxiety" . He saw the illusion. He built a film to expose it.
The Heart We Keep Forgetting
There's a title card in Metropolis that flashes like a desperate prayer: "The mediator between head and hands must be the heart" .
Some critics have dismissed this as simplistic . I think they're wrong.
The "head" represents intellectual leadership—the planners, the architects, the executives who conceive of grand projects . The "hands" are the manual labourers who actually build those dreams into reality . In Lang's city, these two exist in complete separation. The head never sees the hands. The hands never question the head. The system functions, but it's brittle.
Without the heart, there's only friction.
Freder, the protagonist, is the son of the city's ruler. He lives in ignorance, frolicking in pleasure gardens, until he witnesses the horror of the machine halls . He swaps clothes with an exhausted worker and takes his place at a ten-hour clock, arms stretched out in a pose that deliberately echoes the crucifixion . "Father! Father! Will ten hours never end?!" he cries . The bourgeois son discovers what his comfort costs.
This is the mediator's journey. Not a political programme. Not a revolution. Just the simple, devastating act of seeing your brothers and sisters for the first time.
The Robot Maria and the Original Deep Fake
I need to talk about the robot.
Rotwang builds his Maschinenmensch to resurrect his lost love, Hel . But the city's ruler, Joh Fredersen, has other plans. He commands Rotwang to give the robot the face of Maria, the saintly woman who preaches peace to the workers in underground catacombs . The fake Maria then performs a sexualised dance at the Yoshiwara burlesque club, driving men into a frenzy of confusion and desire .
The sequence is extraordinary. The robot rises topless on a platform lifted by gargoyles representing the seven deadly sins . The men pant and fight over her stockings. The real Maria, meanwhile, is imprisoned in Rotwang's house, her likeness stolen, her message corrupted.
This is the original deep fake.
The robot doesn't just look like Maria. It weaponises her image to sow discord, to incite violence, to manipulate behaviour . In 1927, Lang imagined a technology that could hijack identity itself. In 2026, we scroll past AI-generated images every day without blinking.
The Revolution That Failed
Here's the uncomfortable truth about the film's ending.
The workers, hypnotised by the fake Maria, destroy their own machines . The underground city floods. Children are nearly drowned. The workers only snap out of their trance when they remember they've abandoned their families . It's chaos. It's destruction. And in the end, nothing really changes.
The final scene shows Freder bringing together his father (the head) and Grot, the foreman of the heart machine (the hands), for a handshake in front of the cathedral . Maria suggests the mediator show them the way to each other. They shake hands. The film ends.
Marxist scholars have called this a "massive failure for the proletariat" . The masters are still in charge. The workers have placed their trust in a member of the ruling class. The system survives.
But maybe that's the point.
Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou, who wrote the source novel, weren't offering a blueprint for revolution. They were offering a warning. Without the heart—without empathy, without genuine connection between those who plan and those who build—any attempt at change will fracture .
What the Film Got Right (And What It Missed)
Let's be honest about what Metropolis predicted and what it didn't.
It got right: The widening gap between classes. The invisibility of labour. The use of technology to manipulate perception and behaviour. The way systems can demand continuous human sacrifice without anyone noticing .
It missed: Flying cars. Literal humanoid robots in every home. The specific textures of our digital exhaustion.
But Lang wasn't trying to predict gadgets. He was trying to predict dynamics. And on that score, his accuracy is unsettling.
Film critics agree that Metropolis is a visual masterpiece, with results difficult to imagine in 1927—special effects, optical tricks, choreographed extras creating precise geometries or chaotic shapes as needed . Some consider the content too simplistic, the ending too conservative given the complexity of the class conflict depicted . I understand that criticism. I also think it misses something.
The film's moral isn't a policy proposal. It's a plea.
Sitting in 2026, Looking Back
I closed my laptop as the rain eased outside my window. The silence of my apartment felt heavy.
We have the technology Lang feared. We have the social divides he visualised. We have the invisible labour, the algorithmic manipulation, the vertical cities where some live in comfort and others in exhaustion.
The question isn't whether his prediction came true. It's whether we have the heart he hoped for.
I don't know the answer. I'm just a guy in a wheelchair in Tirana, watching a century-old film and feeling the weight of its questions. But I think the asking matters. I think the seeing matters. Freder's journey wasn't about solving the problem of capitalism. It was about refusing to look away.
Maybe that's where we start.
Metropolis ends with a handshake. It's tentative. It's fragile. It's probably not enough. But it's a beginning. And in 2026, beginnings are all we've got.
This article is part of FreeAstroScience's ongoing exploration of science, culture, and the stories that shape how we understand our world. Complex scientific and historical concepts have been simplified for accessibility. If you want to go deeper, I encourage you to watch the film yourself—preferably the restored 2010 version—and draw your own conclusions.
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