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The date 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 represents a leap forward, and it's where we find ourselves, with each science-fiction-style advancement – chiefly the broad integration of AI – appearing dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed dehumanizing technology would actually operate a bit better?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm regarding this?

The answer, at least regarding science fiction films made long ago (or occasionally months ago) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but specifically far-fetched (when mankind is inevitably decimated, we will almost certainly bring down the primate species with us). Others of them are prescient; others just resemble bad green screen. Yet it remains worth examining where various directors, ranging from masters to grunts, believed we'd be situated by this time in our planet's evolution. Therefore, we shall take a look at some of the films that have been set in 2026 over the years and see if they have anything to impart.

Doom

Well, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth can set up a research facility. Now, the bad stuff – in terms of narrative and in terms of garish cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really transpire for two more decades later, so should we find a portal to Mars this year, we might have a respite to avoid true disaster. Were we to discover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would remain extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the discovery wasn't something he funded himself, enabling him to claim savior-like credit for humanity's journey into the stars. That's before we even get to the collection of Martian chromosomes and subsequent transformations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for why, exactly we allow Mars serve as a long-term aspiration for mankind. Be it in John Carpenter's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely serve as a beacon of hope. If anyone wants to close that dubious red-planet property deal, maybe they ought to begin with at least making the fictional depiction look good.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the goofiest quirks of the present MCU is how to account for the multiple global disasters, encompassing a half-decade leap whose occurrences are mostly undepicted in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a clock radio constantly set a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of MCU content that various wikis clarify to be taking place in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated romp *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so seem pretty unmoored from any concrete sense of time. But the poorer material is among the weakest the studio has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless 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 wheel-spinning in 2026, including the accompanying narrative that actually, this nonsensical crap unfolding in front of us is essential to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the real world that claim will probably prove correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the further-flung future 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. Thus, when a pathogen that devastates most of Earth’s people has done its damage, and simultaneously boosted the intelligence of apes, it’s only 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this virus propagates globally and taking place in 2019, appears downright eerie in the wake of the real-world pandemic that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; astonishingly, we’re now six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though clearly impacted by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been wiped out, and technological infrastructure definitely has not been disabled. But this most pessimistic of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a substantial bummer in store, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably lead to violent conflict, no matter the efforts of the most well-meaning among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, although those instincts don't represent the most. Right now, it seems hard to argue with that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

Metropolis

By far the most prominent depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to marking its centennial. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where rich businessmen preside over the skyscrapers 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 massive class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground organizer who advocates for a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans builds a automaton in her likeness, hoping to bring the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a machine designed to imitate a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who desires to see them destroyed; it's a component inverted by reality in a future that otherwise appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery relies on old-fashioned human toil, which seems like a perfect fusion of conservative contempt for “the working class” and corporate enthusiasm for an tech boom. It has not yet materialized, but it's easy to picture a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a return to manufacturing. The trickier, harder-to-imagine feat is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the poor is spanned with compassion; rather than with concrete reforms. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the possibility