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The year 2025 might sound more futuristic. Perhaps it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 represents a leap forward, and it's where we find ourselves, with each science-fiction-style advancement – primarily the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – seeming bleak, or perhaps more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed dehumanizing technology would actually operate a bit better?) Didn't anyone warn us regarding this?

The answer, particularly concerning science fiction films from years ago (or sometimes recently) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail implausible (if humanity is inevitably ravaged, we will almost certainly bring down the ape population alongside us). Others of them are prescient; others just resemble poor visual effects. But it's worth examining where different film-makers, from geniuses to journeymen, thought we'd be situated by now in the world's evolution. Therefore, we shall examine at some of the movies that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they contain any lessons to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this isn't promising. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can establish a scientific outpost. Currently, the negative events – regarding plot and in terms of over-the-top film versions of a FPS video game – does not actually transpire for two more decades later, so should we do discover a portal to Mars this year, we could gain some time to avert true disaster. Were we to discover a portal to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would remain super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the discovery wasn't something he personally paid for, allowing him to assert messianic credit for humanity's journey to the cosmos. This precedes we even get to the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and subsequent mutations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is closer to 2046, not to be confused with the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a good test case for why, exactly we allow Mars become a long-term hope for humanity. Whether in the director's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely act as a beacon of hope. If anyone wishes to close that dubious red-planet property deal, maybe they ought to begin with first making the fictional depiction look good.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the strangest features of the current MCU is how to account for the multiple world-threatening disasters, including a half-decade leap whose events are mostly undepicted in the movies themselves; the films have turned into a alarm clock perpetually set a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. So there's a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that various wikis helpfully explain to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so seem quite detached from any concrete sense of time. However the bad stuff is some of the worst the studio has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're facing a great deal of frustrating stagnation in 2026, along with the related spin that in truth, this nonsensical crap happening in front of us is essential to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the real world that assertion will probably prove accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, starting its chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out the majority of Earth’s people has run its course, and also boosted the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s only 2026, with further human indignities (and victories for apes) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this virus propagates globally and set in 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the wake of the actual global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re already half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly impacted by the ongoing virus, was not annihilated, and our technology certainly hasn't been knocked out. But this most pessimistic of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a significant downer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will unavoidably lead to warfare, regardless of the efforts of the most well-meaning among us. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, even if those instincts are not held by the most. Right now, it seems difficult to dispute that, even though we probably should.

The Silent Classic

By far the best-known portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to marking its centennial. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where wealthy industrialists lord over the skyscrapers as workers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that keep everything running. Affluent surface resident Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive social gaps when he falls for Maria, an underground organizer who preaches a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans creates a robot in her likeness, hoping to bring the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a machine designed to imitate a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who wants to witness their downfall; it's one element flipped by reality in a future that in other ways appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology relies on traditional human toil, which appears as a perfect fusion of rightwing disdain for “the working class” and corporate zeal for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's simple to picture a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a resurgence to manufacturing. The more complex, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the poor is bridged with compassion; not so much with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the possibility