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The year 2025 could appear more futuristic. Maybe it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 represents a leap forward, a moment where we find ourselves, with each science-fiction-style development – primarily the broad integration of artificial intelligence – appearing dystopian, or possibly more grim. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology would actually function more effectively?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm about this?

The answer, at least regarding science fiction films made long ago (or sometimes months ago) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of those warnings are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably ravaged, we will almost certainly take the ape population with us). Others of them are visionary; the rest just look like poor green screen. Yet it remains worth examining where different film-makers, ranging from masters to grunts, believed we'd be positioned by this time in the world's evolution. Therefore, we shall examine a selection of the films that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and see if they contain any lessons to impart.

Doom

Now, this isn't promising. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to set up a research facility. Currently, the negative events – regarding narrative and concerning garish cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – doesn't really go down for another 20 years later, so even if we do discover a Martian gateway now, we might have some time to avert catastrophe. Were we to uncover a portal to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would still be super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the portal was not a thing he personally paid for, enabling him to assert messianic credit for mankind's expansion into the stars. This precedes we consider the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting transformations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for why, exactly we allow Mars become a long-term aspiration for humanity. Be it in John Carpenter's cheap-looking genre hybrid *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 hope. Should someone wants to make that questionable Martian real estate sale, perhaps they ought to begin with at least ensuring the fictional depiction look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the goofiest quirks of the current MCU is the way it handles the various world-threatening cataclysms, including a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are largely not shown in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a clock radio constantly set a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of MCU content that various wikis helpfully explain to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated adventure *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so feel pretty unmoored from any concrete sense of time. But the bad stuff is among the weakest Marvel has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on this stuff, we're facing a whole lot of frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the related narrative that in truth, this nonsensical crap unfolding before our eyes is essential to future events. Even worse, in the real world that assertion will likely prove accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is located in the more distant 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 around 2016. So by the time a virus that devastates most of Earth’s people has done its damage, and simultaneously enhanced the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s merely 2026, with further human indignities (and simian triumphs) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this virus spreads globally and set in 2019, appears downright eerie in the wake of the actual global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; astonishingly, we’re now six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though obviously impacted by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been annihilated, and technological infrastructure definitely hasn't been knocked out. Yet this bleakest of the four modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a significant downer in store, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will unavoidably lead to violent conflict, regardless of the efforts of the best-intentioned among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, even if those drives are not held by the majority. Currently, it feels difficult to argue with that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

Metropolis

Easily the most prominent depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to celebrating its centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place 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, scion of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these enormous class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean activist who advocates for a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans creates a robot in her likeness, hoping to bring the entire Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a machine created to mimic a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who wants to witness their downfall; it's a component flipped by the modern world in a future that in other ways appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery depends on old-fashioned human toil, which seems like a perfect union of conservative contempt for “the working class” and business enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It has not yet come to pass, but it's simple to picture a slightly more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a resurgence to manufacturing. The trickier, less plausible accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the haves and the poor is bridged with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the chance