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The date 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies a leap forward, a moment where we find ourselves, with every science-fiction-style development – primarily the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – appearing bleak, or perhaps more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed dehumanizing technology would actually function more effectively?) Didn't anyone warn us regarding this?

The response, particularly regarding science fiction films made long ago (or sometimes recently) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of these prophecies are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is ultimately ravaged, we will most likely bring down the ape population with us). Some of them are prescient; others just look like bad green screen. Yet it remains valuable to explore where various directors, from geniuses to grunts, thought we'd be positioned by this time in our planet's development. So let's take a look a selection of the films that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they have anything to impart.

The Game '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 humanity discovers a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can set up a research facility. Currently, the bad stuff – in terms of plot and in terms of over-the-top cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – doesn't really transpire for two more decades later, so even if we find a portal to Mars this year, we could gain some time to avert catastrophe. If we did uncover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether Elon Musk would still be extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the discovery was not a thing he personally paid for, enabling him to assert savior-like ownership for mankind's journey to the cosmos. That's before we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting transformations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for the reasons we allow Mars become a long-term hope for humanity. Whether in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely act as a beacon of hope. Should someone wishes to make that questionable Martian property deal, perhaps they should start with first making the fictional depiction look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the strangest features of the current MCU is the way it handles the various world-threatening disasters, including a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are mostly not shown in the movies themselves; the films have become like a alarm clock perpetually running a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of Marvel stuff that fan sites clarify to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so seem quite unmoored from any concrete sense of time. But the poorer material is among the weakest the studio has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by this stuff, we're facing a great deal of annoying stagnation in 2026, including the accompanying spin that in truth, this nonsensical crap happening in front of us is crucial to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will probably prove correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, starting its timeline around 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that knocks out the majority of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and also boosted the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s merely 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this contagion spreads globally and set in 2019, appears downright eerie in the aftermath of the real-world pandemic that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, 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, was not annihilated, and technological infrastructure certainly hasn't been disabled. But this most pessimistic of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a significant downer in store, implying that human and/or ape nature, however one defines either, will inevitably lead to violent conflict, no matter the efforts of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, although those drives are not held by the most. Right now, it feels difficult to dispute that, even though we ought to try.

Metropolis

By far the best-known portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists preside over the skyscrapers as laborers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that power the city. Affluent surface resident Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground organizer who advocates for a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans builds a automaton in her likeness, hoping to bring the whole of Metropolis to ruin. Here, a robot designed to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who desires to see them destroyed; it's a component flipped by reality in a future that otherwise appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology depends on traditional manual labor, which appears as a perfect fusion of conservative contempt for “unskilled workers” and corporate enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's simple to imagine a slightly less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a resurgence to manufacturing. The more complex, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the poor is spanned with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the chance