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The date 2025 might sound more futuristic. Maybe it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 represents one step beyond, a moment where we currently stand, with each science-fiction-style development – chiefly the broad integration of artificial intelligence – seeming bleak, or possibly more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology would actually operate a bit better?) Did no one sound the alarm about this?

The answer, at least regarding our sci-fi movies from years ago (or occasionally months ago) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of these prophecies are broadly applicable (global catastrophe) but specifically implausible (when mankind is ultimately decimated, we will most likely take the primate species alongside us). Some of them are prescient; the rest just look like bad visual effects. Yet it remains worth examining where different film-makers, from geniuses to grunts, thought we'd be positioned by this time in our planet's development. Therefore, we shall take a look a selection of the films that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and see if they have anything to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this isn't promising. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by hardly anyone, 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 scientific outpost. Currently, the negative events – regarding narrative and in terms of over-the-top film versions of a FPS video game – does not actually transpire for two more decades in the future, so should we find a portal to Mars this year, we might have a respite to avert true disaster. Were we to discover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether Elon Musk would remain super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the portal was not a thing he funded himself, enabling him to claim messianic credit for humanity's journey to the cosmos. This precedes we consider the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting mutations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a good test case for why, exactly we let Mars serve as a stretch-goal aspiration for mankind. Be it in the director's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to serve as a symbol of hope. If anyone wishes to make that questionable red-planet real estate sale, perhaps they should start with first making the fictional depiction look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the strangest features of the present MCU is the way it handles the multiple world-threatening disasters, encompassing a half-decade leap whose events are largely not shown in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a alarm clock constantly set a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. So there's a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that various wikis helpfully explain to be set in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated romp *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so feel quite unmoored from our sense of time. However the poorer material is among the weakest Marvel has ever produced: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're facing a whole lot of frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the related spin that actually, this nonsensical crap unfolding in front of us is essential to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will likely prove accurate.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, starting its chronology around 2016. Thus, when a virus that knocks out the majority of Earth’s human population has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s only 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this contagion spreads around the world and set around 2019, appears downright eerie in the aftermath of the actual pandemic that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; astonishingly, we’re already six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though clearly impacted by the ongoing virus, hasn't been annihilated, and our technology certainly has not been disabled. Yet this most pessimistic of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a substantial downer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines each, will inevitably lead to warfare, no matter the efforts of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, although those instincts don't represent the majority. Right now, it seems hard to argue with that, even though we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

Easily the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists lord over the towers as workers toil below the surface on the equipment that keep everything running. Affluent city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these enormous class divisions when he falls for Maria, an subterranean activist who preaches a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans creates a robot in her image, aiming to bring the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a machine created to mimic a human isn't a tool of the elite, but someone who desires to witness their downfall; it's one element flipped by the modern world in a future that otherwise appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology depends on old-fashioned human toil, which seems like a most logical fusion of rightwing disdain for “unskilled workers” and corporate zeal for an tech boom. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's easy to imagine a slightly more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a resurgence to industrial production. The more complex, less plausible accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the poor is spanned with love; not so much with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the possibility