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The date 2025 could appear more futuristic. Perhaps it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies one step beyond, a moment where we find ourselves, with every futuristic 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-sponsored dehumanizing technology might function more effectively?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm regarding this?

The response, at least regarding science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally recently) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but specifically far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably ravaged, we will almost certainly take the primate species with us). Others of them are prescient; others just look like bad green screen. Yet it remains valuable to explore where different directors, ranging from masters to grunts, thought we'd be situated by this time in our planet's evolution. So let's take a look at some of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and determine if they have anything to teach us.

Doom

Now, this isn't promising. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to set up a scientific outpost. Currently, the negative events – in terms of plot and in terms of over-the-top cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really transpire for another 20 years in the future, so even if we find a portal to Mars now, we could gain a respite to avoid true disaster. Were we to uncover a portal to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would remain super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the portal was not a thing he funded himself, enabling him to assert savior-like ownership for humanity's expansion to the cosmos. This precedes we even get to the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting mutations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for why, exactly we let Mars become a stretch-goal aspiration for mankind. Whether in the director's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely serve as a symbol of optimism. If anyone wants to close that questionable Martian real estate sale, maybe they ought to begin with first ensuring the fictional depiction look good.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the goofiest quirks of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the various global disasters, encompassing a half-decade leap whose occurrences are mostly not shown in the movies themselves; the films have turned into a alarm clock constantly running a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that fan sites clarify to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated adventure *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so feel quite unmoored from our sense of time. However the bad stuff is some of the worst the studio 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 these examples, we're in for a whole lot of frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the related spin that actually, this confusing mess happening in front of us is crucial to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the actual world that assertion will probably turn out to be correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, starting its timeline approximately 2016. Thus, when a virus that knocks out the majority of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and simultaneously boosted the intelligence of primates, it’s merely 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this contagion propagates around the world and taking place in 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the wake of the real-world global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re already half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though clearly wounded by the ongoing virus, hasn't been annihilated, and technological infrastructure certainly has not been knocked out. But this bleakest of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a substantial bummer in store, implying that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as either, will inevitably result in warfare, regardless of the work of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, even if those drives are not held by the majority. Right now, it feels hard to dispute that, despite the fact that we probably should.

Metropolis

Easily the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing celebrating its centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where wealthy industrialists lord over the towers as workers work tirelessly underground on the machines that power the city. Affluent city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these massive social gaps when he falls for Maria, an subterranean activist who advocates for a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans builds a automaton in her likeness, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a robot designed to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but someone who wants to see them destroyed; it's one element flipped by reality in a future that otherwise seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery depends on traditional human toil, which appears as a most logical fusion of rightwing disdain for “unskilled workers” and corporate enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's simple to imagine a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a return to manufacturing. The more complex, harder-to-imagine feat is the ending of the film, where the gap between the haves and the poor is spanned with compassion; not so much with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the possibility