🔗 Share this article

The date 2025 could appear more futuristic. Maybe it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 represents one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style development – chiefly the broad integration of AI – seeming bleak, or possibly more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed dehumanizing technology would actually operate more effectively?) Did no one warn us regarding this?

The answer, at least concerning science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally months ago) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of those warnings are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but in detail implausible (when mankind is ultimately ravaged, we will most likely bring down the ape population alongside us). Others of them are prescient; the rest just look like poor visual effects. But it's worth examining where different directors, ranging from masters to grunts, believed we'd be positioned by this time in the world's evolution. So let's examine a selection of the films that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they contain any lessons to impart.

Doom

Well, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can establish a research facility. Currently, the negative events – in terms of plot and concerning over-the-top cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – does not actually transpire for two more decades later, so even if we do discover a Martian gateway this year, we could gain some time to avert true disaster. If we did discover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether Elon Musk would remain super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the discovery was not a thing he funded himself, enabling him to claim messianic ownership for mankind's expansion into the stars. This precedes we consider the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and resulting transformations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a good test case for why, exactly we let Mars serve as a stretch-goal aspiration for humanity. Whether in the director's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely act as a beacon of hope. If anyone wishes to close that dubious Martian property deal, perhaps they should start with first ensuring the fantasy version appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the strangest features of the present MCU is how to account for the multiple global disasters, encompassing a half-decade leap whose occurrences are largely undepicted in the movies themselves; the films have become like a alarm clock perpetually set a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. So there's a whole bunch of MCU content that various wikis helpfully explain to be taking place in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so seem pretty unmoored from any concrete sense of time. But the bad stuff is among the weakest Marvel has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're facing a great deal of annoying stagnation in 2026, including the related narrative that actually, this nonsensical crap unfolding in front of us is essential to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the real world that assertion will probably prove correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is located in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, starting its chronology around 2016. So by the time a pathogen that knocks out most of Earth’s human population has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s merely 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this virus spreads around the world and taking place around 2019, looks downright eerie in the wake of the actual pandemic that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; if you can believe it, we’re already six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously impacted by the ongoing virus, was not annihilated, and technological infrastructure certainly hasn't been knocked out. Yet this bleakest of the four modern *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a significant bummer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will unavoidably lead to 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 are not held by the most. Currently, it feels difficult to argue with that, despite the fact that we probably should.

The Silent Classic

By far the best-known portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing marking its centennial. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where wealthy industrialists lord over the skyscrapers as laborers toil below the surface on the equipment that power the city. Rich city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these massive social gaps when he falls for Maria, an subterranean organizer who preaches a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans creates a automaton in her image, aiming to bring the entire Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a robot created to mimic a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who wants to see them destroyed; it's one element flipped by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology relies on old-fashioned manual labor, which seems like a most logical union of rightwing disdain for “the working class” and corporate enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's simple to picture a slightly more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a return to manufacturing. The trickier, less plausible feat is the ending of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the poor is bridged with love; rather than with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the chance