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The date 2025 could appear more futuristic. Maybe it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies a leap forward, a moment where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style development – chiefly the broad integration of artificial intelligence – seeming dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored anti-human technology might function more effectively?) Did no one sound the alarm about this?

The response, at least concerning science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally recently) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of these prophecies are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but specifically far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably decimated, we will almost certainly take the ape population alongside us). Some of them are prescient; the rest just look like bad visual effects. But it's worth examining where different directors, ranging from masters to grunts, thought we'd be positioned by now in our planet's evolution. Therefore, we shall examine at some of the films that have been set in 2026 over the years and see if they have anything to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this isn't promising. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Currently, the bad stuff – regarding plot and concerning over-the-top film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually go down for another 20 years later, so should we find a portal to Mars now, we could gain some time to avert true disaster. If we did uncover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether Elon Musk would remain super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the portal was not a thing he personally paid for, allowing him to claim messianic credit for humanity's journey into the stars. This precedes we consider the collection of Martian chromosomes and subsequent transformations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for why, exactly we let Mars become a stretch-goal hope for mankind. Whether in the director's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to serve as a beacon of optimism. If anyone wants to close that dubious red-planet real estate sale, perhaps they ought to begin with at least making the fantasy version look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the goofiest quirks of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the multiple world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a half-decade leap whose occurrences are mostly undepicted in the films themselves; the movies have become like a clock radio perpetually set 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 set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so seem quite detached from our sense of time. But the poorer material is some of the worst Marvel has ever produced: 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 in for a whole lot of annoying stagnation in 2026, including the accompanying narrative that in truth, this nonsensical crap happening in front of us is crucial to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will probably prove correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, initiating its timeline around 2016. So by the time a virus that devastates the majority of Earth’s people has done its damage, and simultaneously enhanced the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s only 2026, with further human indignities (and simian triumphs) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this virus propagates globally and taking place in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the wake of the real-world pandemic that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; astonishingly, we’re now half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though clearly impacted by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been wiped out, and our technology certainly hasn't been knocked out. Yet this bleakest of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a substantial downer in store, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines either, will unavoidably lead to warfare, regardless of the efforts of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, although those drives don't represent the most. Right now, it feels difficult to argue with that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

By far the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen preside over the skyscrapers as workers work tirelessly below the surface on the equipment that power the city. Affluent surface resident Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these enormous social gaps when he falls for Maria, an underground activist who preaches a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans creates a automaton in her image, aiming to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a robot created to mimic a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who desires to witness their downfall; it's one element flipped by reality in a future that in other ways appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology depends on old-fashioned manual labor, which appears as a perfect union of rightwing disdain for “the working class” and business enthusiasm for an tech boom. It has not yet come to pass, but it's easy to imagine a slightly less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a resurgence to industrial production. The more complex, harder-to-imagine feat is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the poor is bridged with compassion; rather than with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the possibility