🔗 Share this article

The year 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 represents a leap forward, and it's where we currently stand, with each science-fiction-style development – primarily the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – appearing dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored anti-human technology would actually operate more effectively?) Did no one warn us regarding this?

The answer, particularly concerning science fiction films from years ago (or sometimes recently) set in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably decimated, we will almost certainly bring down the ape population alongside us). Some of them are visionary; the rest just look like bad visual effects. But it's valuable to explore where various directors, ranging from masters to grunts, thought we'd be positioned by this time in the world's evolution. So let's examine a selection of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they contain any lessons to impart.

Doom

Now, this isn't promising. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth can set up a scientific outpost. Now, the bad stuff – regarding narrative and in terms of over-the-top film versions of a FPS video game – doesn't really transpire for two more decades later, so should we find a portal to Mars this year, we could gain some time to avert true disaster. If we did uncover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would still be extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the discovery wasn't something he funded himself, allowing him to claim messianic ownership for humanity's expansion into the stars. That's before we even get to the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and resulting transformations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for the reasons we allow Mars serve as a long-term hope for mankind. Whether in John Carpenter's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to serve as a symbol of optimism. If anyone wishes to make that dubious red-planet real estate sale, perhaps they should start with first ensuring the fictional depiction appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the goofiest quirks of the present MCU is how to account for the multiple world-threatening cataclysms, including a five-year time-jump whose events are largely undepicted in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a alarm clock constantly running a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of MCU content that fan sites helpfully explain to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so feel quite unmoored from our sense of time. But the poorer material is some of the worst the studio has ever produced: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're facing a whole lot of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, including the related narrative that in truth, this nonsensical crap unfolding before our eyes is crucial to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the actual world that assertion will probably prove correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the further-flung future of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, starting its chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a pathogen that knocks out most of Earth’s people has done its damage, and also boosted 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*, depicting how swiftly this virus propagates globally and set in 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the wake of the real-world pandemic that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; astonishingly, we’re already six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly wounded by the still-spreading virus, was not annihilated, and our technology certainly hasn't been disabled. But this most pessimistic of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a substantial bummer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines either, will unavoidably result in violent conflict, no matter the work of the best-intentioned among us. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, even if those instincts don't represent the most. Currently, it feels difficult to argue with that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

Metropolis

By far the best-known portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists preside over the towers as laborers work tirelessly underground on the equipment that power the city. Rich city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these enormous class divisions when he falls for Maria, an underground activist who preaches a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans creates a robot in her likeness, hoping to bring the entire Metropolis to ruin. Here, a machine designed to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but someone who desires to witness their downfall; it's one element inverted by reality in a future that otherwise seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery depends on old-fashioned human toil, which seems like a most logical fusion of rightwing contempt for “unskilled workers” and corporate zeal for an tech boom. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's easy to picture a somewhat less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The trickier, less plausible accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the poor is bridged with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the chance