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The year 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies a leap forward, a moment where we find ourselves, with every futuristic development – chiefly the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – seeming bleak, or perhaps even worse. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored anti-human technology might operate more effectively?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm regarding this?

The answer, particularly regarding science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally recently) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of these prophecies are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but in detail far-fetched (when mankind is inevitably decimated, we will most likely bring down the ape population alongside us). Some of them are prescient; others just look like bad green screen. But it's worth examining where different film-makers, from geniuses to journeymen, thought we'd be situated by now in our planet's evolution. Therefore, we shall examine at some of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they contain any lessons to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth can establish a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – regarding narrative and concerning over-the-top film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually go down for another 20 years in the future, so even if we do discover a Martian gateway this year, we might have a respite to avoid true disaster. If we did uncover a portal to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether Elon Musk would remain extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the discovery was not a thing he personally paid for, allowing him to claim savior-like ownership for mankind's expansion into the stars. This precedes we even get to the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent transformations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a good test case for why, exactly we let Mars become a long-term aspiration for humanity. Be it in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely serve as a beacon of optimism. Should someone wants to close that dubious red-planet real estate sale, perhaps they ought to begin with first ensuring the fictional depiction look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the strangest features of the current MCU is the way it handles the multiple global disasters, including a five-year time-jump whose events are largely undepicted in the films themselves; the movies have become like a alarm clock constantly running a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a whole bunch of MCU content that fan sites helpfully explain to be set in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated romp *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so seem quite unmoored from any concrete sense of time. However the poorer material is some of the worst the studio has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're facing a whole lot of frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the related spin that in truth, this nonsensical crap unfolding in front of us is essential to future events. Even worse, in the real world that assertion will probably turn out to be correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, starting its chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a pathogen that devastates most of Earth’s people has done its damage, and simultaneously boosted the intelligence of primates, it’s merely 2026, with further human indignities (and victories for apes) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this contagion propagates globally and taking place around 2019, appears downright eerie in the aftermath of the actual global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; astonishingly, we’re now six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly impacted by the ongoing virus, hasn't been annihilated, and our technology definitely has not been disabled. Yet this bleakest of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a substantial bummer in store, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines each, will inevitably result in violent conflict, regardless of the work of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, even if those drives are not held by the majority. Right now, it seems difficult to argue with that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

Easily the best-known portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing celebrating its centennial. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen preside over the skyscrapers as workers toil below the surface on the equipment that power the city. Rich surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these enormous social gaps when he falls for Maria, an subterranean organizer who advocates for a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans builds a robot in her likeness, hoping to bring the whole of Metropolis to ruin. 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 witness their downfall; it's one element flipped by reality in a future that otherwise appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology depends on old-fashioned manual labor, which appears as a perfect fusion of rightwing disdain for “unskilled workers” and corporate enthusiasm for an tech boom. It has not yet materialized, but it's easy to picture a slightly less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a return to manufacturing. The trickier, less plausible feat is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the have-nots is bridged with love; rather than with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the chance