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The year 2025 might sound more futuristic. Maybe it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with every futuristic development – chiefly the widespread adoption of AI – appearing dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology would actually function a bit better?) Didn't anyone warn us regarding this?

The answer, at least regarding science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally recently) set in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of those warnings are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but specifically implausible (if humanity is inevitably decimated, we will most likely take the primate species with us). Others of them are visionary; others just resemble poor visual effects. But it's worth examining where various directors, ranging from masters to grunts, thought we'd be situated by this time in the world's development. 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.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this doesn't bode well. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can establish a research facility. Currently, the negative events – regarding plot and in terms of over-the-top film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really transpire for another 20 years later, so even if we do discover a Martian gateway this year, we could gain a respite to avert catastrophe. If we did discover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether Elon Musk would remain extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the portal wasn't something he funded himself, allowing him to assert messianic ownership for mankind's journey into the stars. That's before we even get to the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting transformations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is nearer 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 allow Mars serve as a long-term hope for mankind. Be it in John Carpenter's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely serve as a beacon of optimism. If anyone wants to make that questionable Martian property deal, perhaps they should start with first making the fictional depiction look good.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the goofiest quirks of the present MCU is the way it handles the multiple global disasters, encompassing a half-decade leap whose events are largely undepicted in the films themselves; the films have become like a clock radio perpetually running a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. So there's a large assortment of Marvel stuff that various wikis clarify to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, take place distant from Earth, and so feel pretty unmoored from our sense of time. However the bad stuff is among the weakest Marvel 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 annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, including the related spin that in truth, this nonsensical crap unfolding before our eyes is crucial to future events. More troublingly, in the actual world that assertion will likely turn out to be accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the more distant future 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. Thus, when a virus that devastates the majority of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of primates, it’s merely 2026, with further human indignities (and simian triumphs) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this contagion spreads around the world and set around 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the wake of the real-world pandemic that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re now half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though obviously wounded by the ongoing virus, was not wiped out, and our technology definitely hasn't been knocked out. But this most pessimistic of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a substantial bummer in store, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will inevitably lead to violent conflict, no matter the work of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, even if those drives are not held by the majority. Currently, it feels difficult to argue with that, even though we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

Easily the best-known portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to celebrating its 100th anniversary. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen lord over the towers as laborers work tirelessly underground on the equipment that keep everything running. Affluent city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these enormous social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground organizer who preaches a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans builds a automaton in her likeness, aiming to tear the whole of Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a machine designed to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who wants to see them destroyed; it's one element flipped by reality in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery depends on traditional human toil, which appears as a perfect union of conservative disdain for “the working class” and business zeal for an tech boom. It has not yet come to pass, but it's easy to picture a somewhat less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a resurgence to industrial production. The trickier, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is spanned with love; not so much with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the chance