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The date 2025 could appear more futuristic. Perhaps it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies one step beyond, a moment where we find ourselves, with every science-fiction-style advancement – chiefly the widespread adoption of AI – seeming bleak, or possibly more grim. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed dehumanizing technology might operate a bit better?) Did no one warn us regarding this?

The response, particularly concerning our sci-fi movies from years ago (or sometimes months ago) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of these prophecies are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but in detail implausible (if humanity is ultimately ravaged, we will almost certainly take the primate species with us). Some of them are prescient; others just look like poor visual effects. Yet it remains worth examining where various film-makers, ranging from masters to grunts, thought we'd be positioned by now in our planet's evolution. 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 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 mankind finds a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can establish a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – regarding plot and in terms of over-the-top cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – does not actually go down for two more decades later, so even if we find a portal to Mars now, we could gain some time to avoid true disaster. If we did uncover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would remain extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the discovery wasn't something he personally paid for, allowing him to assert savior-like credit for mankind's expansion to the cosmos. That's before we even get to the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and subsequent transformations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a good test case for why, exactly we let Mars serve as a stretch-goal hope for humanity. Be it in John Carpenter's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to act as a symbol of optimism. If anyone wants to close that questionable red-planet real estate sale, maybe they ought to begin with at least making the fictional depiction look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the goofiest quirks of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the multiple global cataclysms, including a five-year time-jump whose events are mostly undepicted in the films themselves; the films have turned into a alarm clock constantly running a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of MCU content that fan sites clarify to be set in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated romp *The Marvels*, take place distant from Earth, and so feel quite detached from our sense of time. But the poorer material is among the weakest Marvel has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're in for a whole lot of annoying stagnation in 2026, including the related spin that actually, this confusing mess unfolding before our eyes is crucial to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the real world that claim will probably turn out to be correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, initiating its chronology around 2016. So by the time a pathogen that devastates most of Earth’s human population has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s merely 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this virus spreads globally and taking place around 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the real-world pandemic that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; if you can believe it, we’re already six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though clearly wounded by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been annihilated, and technological infrastructure definitely has not been disabled. Yet this most pessimistic of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a significant downer to offer, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines either, will inevitably lead to violent conflict, no matter the work of the most well-meaning among us. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, even if those instincts don't represent the majority. Currently, it seems hard to argue with that, even though we probably should.

Metropolis

Easily the most prominent depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to celebrating its centennial. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists lord over the skyscrapers as workers work tirelessly below the surface on the equipment that keep everything running. Affluent city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these massive class divisions when he falls for Maria, an underground activist who preaches a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor 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 ruling corporate class, but someone who desires to see them destroyed; it's a component inverted by reality in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology depends on old-fashioned human toil, which appears as a perfect union of conservative contempt for “unskilled workers” and corporate zeal for an AI bubble. It has not yet come to pass, but it's easy to imagine a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The trickier, less plausible accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the gap between the haves and the poor is spanned with compassion; not so much with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the possibility