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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 a leap forward, and it's where we find ourselves, with each futuristic development – chiefly the widespread adoption of AI – seeming dystopian, or perhaps more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed anti-human technology might operate a bit better?) Did no one warn us about this?

The answer, at least regarding our sci-fi movies from years ago (or occasionally months ago) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is ultimately ravaged, we will most likely take the primate species alongside us). Others of them are visionary; the rest just look like bad green screen. Yet it remains worth examining where different film-makers, ranging from masters to grunts, believed we'd be positioned by now in our planet's development. Therefore, we shall take a look at some of the movies that have been set in 2026 over the years and determine if they contain any lessons to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this isn't promising. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to set up a scientific outpost. Currently, the bad stuff – regarding narrative and in terms of garish cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually transpire for another 20 years later, so should we do discover a portal to Mars this year, we could gain a respite to avoid catastrophe. If we did uncover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would still be super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the portal wasn't something he funded himself, allowing him to claim messianic credit for humanity's journey into the stars. That's before we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting transformations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for why, exactly we let Mars become a long-term aspiration for humanity. Whether in the director's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to act as a symbol of optimism. Should someone wants to make that questionable red-planet real estate sale, perhaps they should start with at least making the fictional depiction look good.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the goofiest quirks of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the various world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose events are largely undepicted in the films themselves; the movies have turned into a clock radio perpetually running a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that various wikis helpfully explain to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated adventure *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so feel quite unmoored from our sense of time. But the poorer material is some of the worst the studio has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on this stuff, we're facing a great deal of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, including the accompanying narrative that actually, this confusing mess happening in front of us is essential to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the real world that claim will likely prove accurate.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is located in the further-flung future of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, initiating its timeline approximately 2016. So by the time a pathogen that knocks out the majority of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and simultaneously boosted the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s merely 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this virus spreads globally and set in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the wake of the actual pandemic that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re now half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though clearly wounded by the ongoing virus, hasn't been annihilated, and our technology definitely has not been knocked out. But this most pessimistic of the four modern *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a significant bummer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will unavoidably result in violent conflict, no matter 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 instincts don't represent the most. Right now, it seems difficult to argue with that, even though we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

By far the best-known depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where rich businessmen lord over the towers as workers work tirelessly underground on the equipment that power the city. Rich surface resident Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these massive class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean activist who advocates for a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans builds a automaton in her image, hoping to bring the entire Metropolis down in flames. Here, a machine 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 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 technology relies on old-fashioned manual labor, which appears as a perfect fusion of rightwing disdain for “the working class” and business enthusiasm for an tech boom. It has not yet materialized, but it's easy to imagine a somewhat more utilitarian version of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a return to manufacturing. The trickier, harder-to-imagine feat is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is spanned with love; rather than with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the possibility