🔗 Share this article

The date 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 represents one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style advancement – primarily the broad integration of AI – appearing dystopian, or possibly more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology would actually function more effectively?) Didn't anyone warn us regarding this?

The response, at least regarding science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally months ago) set in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail implausible (if humanity is ultimately decimated, we will almost certainly take the primate species with us). Some of them are visionary; the rest just look like poor visual effects. Yet it remains valuable to explore where different film-makers, ranging from masters to grunts, believed we'd be positioned by this time in the world's development. So let's take a look at some of the films that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they contain any lessons to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this isn't promising. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can establish a research facility. Currently, the bad stuff – regarding narrative and in terms of over-the-top film versions of a FPS video game – doesn't really go down for another 20 years later, so even if we find a Martian gateway this year, we could gain some time to avoid true disaster. If we did discover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell 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 funded himself, allowing him to assert messianic ownership for mankind's expansion into the stars. This precedes we even get to the collection of Martian chromosomes and resulting mutations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for why, exactly we allow Mars serve as a long-term aspiration for mankind. Be it in the director's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely serve as a symbol of hope. If anyone wants to make that questionable Martian real estate sale, 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 the way it handles the various world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are mostly undepicted in the movies themselves; the films have become like a alarm clock constantly set a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's years. So there's a large assortment of Marvel stuff that various wikis clarify to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated romp *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so feel pretty detached from any concrete sense of time. But the poorer material is some of the worst Marvel has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're in for a whole lot of frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the accompanying spin that in truth, this nonsensical crap happening in front of us is crucial to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the real world that assertion will probably turn out to be accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the classic five-film *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* starts nearer the present, starting its timeline around 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 apes, it’s merely 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this contagion spreads around the world and set around 2019, appears downright eerie in the aftermath of the actual pandemic that would dawn 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 obviously wounded by the still-spreading virus, was not annihilated, and our technology definitely has not been knocked out. Yet this most pessimistic of the four modern *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a significant bummer to offer, suggesting that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably lead to violent conflict, no matter the efforts of the best-intentioned among us. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, although those drives don't represent the majority. Right now, it feels hard to argue with that, despite the fact that we probably should.

The Silent Classic

Easily the best-known depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to celebrating its centennial. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where wealthy industrialists preside over the towers as laborers work tirelessly below the surface on the equipment that keep everything running. Rich surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these enormous class divisions when he falls for Maria, an subterranean organizer who preaches a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans builds a automaton in her likeness, hoping to bring the whole of Metropolis to ruin. Here, a robot designed to mimic a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who wants to see them destroyed; it's one element inverted by the modern world in a future that in other ways appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology depends on traditional human toil, which seems like a most logical fusion of rightwing contempt for “unskilled workers” and business zeal for an AI bubble. It has not yet materialized, but it's easy to imagine a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a return to manufacturing. The trickier, less plausible accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the gap between the haves and the poor is bridged with compassion; rather than with concrete reforms. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the chance