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The date 2025 might sound more futuristic. Perhaps it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 represents a leap forward, a moment where we currently stand, with every futuristic development – primarily the broad integration of AI – seeming dystopian, or possibly more grim. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored anti-human technology might operate a bit better?) Did no one sound the alarm about this?

The answer, particularly concerning science fiction films made long ago (or occasionally months ago) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of these prophecies are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but specifically far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably ravaged, we will most likely bring down the primate species with us). Others of them are visionary; others just resemble bad visual effects. But it's valuable to explore where different directors, ranging from masters to grunts, thought we'd be situated by this time in our planet's development. Therefore, we shall take a look a selection of the films that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and determine if they have anything to teach us.

Doom

Now, this doesn't bode well. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can set up a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – regarding plot and in terms of over-the-top film versions of a FPS video game – doesn't really transpire for two more decades later, so even if we do discover a portal to Mars this year, we might have a respite to avert catastrophe. Were we to discover a portal to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether Elon Musk would remain extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the discovery was not a thing he funded himself, allowing him to claim savior-like credit for mankind's expansion into the stars. This precedes we even get to the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and resulting mutations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for the reasons we allow Mars become a stretch-goal hope for mankind. Be it in John Carpenter's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to act as a beacon of optimism. Should someone wants to make that questionable Martian property deal, perhaps they ought to begin with at least ensuring the fictional depiction look good.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the goofiest quirks of the present MCU is how to account for the various world-threatening disasters, including a half-decade leap whose occurrences are largely undepicted in the movies themselves; the films have become like a alarm clock perpetually running a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of Marvel stuff that various wikis helpfully explain to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so seem quite detached from our sense of time. However the bad stuff is some of the worst Marvel has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're facing a great deal of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, including the accompanying narrative that actually, this confusing mess happening before our eyes is essential to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the actual world that claim will likely prove correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the more distant future of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, initiating its timeline approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that devastates most of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of primates, it’s only 2026, with further human indignities (and simian triumphs) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this contagion spreads around the world and taking place around 2019, appears downright eerie in the wake of the real-world global health crisis that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re already six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously impacted by the still-spreading virus, was not annihilated, and our technology definitely has not been knocked out. Yet this bleakest of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a significant downer in store, suggesting that human and/or ape nature, however one defines either, will inevitably lead to violent conflict, no matter the work of the best-intentioned among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, although those instincts don't represent the majority. Right now, it seems hard to argue with that, despite the fact that we probably should.

Metropolis

By far the most prominent depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to marking its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where wealthy industrialists lord over the towers as laborers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that keep everything running. Affluent city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these massive social gaps when he falls for Maria, an subterranean organizer who preaches a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans creates a robot in her likeness, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a machine created to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but an entity who desires to see them destroyed; it's a component flipped by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery relies on old-fashioned human toil, which appears as a most logical fusion of conservative contempt for “the working class” and corporate enthusiasm for an tech boom. It has not yet materialized, but it's simple to picture a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a return to industrial production. The more complex, less plausible accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is bridged with compassion; rather than with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the possibility