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The year 2025 might sound more futuristic. Maybe it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies a leap forward, and it's where we find ourselves, with each science-fiction-style development – primarily the widespread adoption of AI – appearing dystopian, or perhaps more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored anti-human technology would actually operate a bit better?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm about this?

The answer, at least concerning science fiction films from years ago (or sometimes recently) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but specifically far-fetched (when mankind is inevitably ravaged, we will most likely bring down the ape population alongside us). Others of them are prescient; the rest just resemble bad visual effects. Yet it remains valuable to explore where various directors, from geniuses to grunts, believed we'd be positioned by this time in our planet's development. Therefore, we shall take a look a selection of the movies that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they contain any lessons to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this isn't promising. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to set up a scientific outpost. Currently, the bad stuff – in terms of narrative and in terms of over-the-top cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – does not actually go down for another 20 years in the future, so even if we do discover a portal to Mars now, we might have a respite to avoid catastrophe. If we did discover a portal to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether Elon Musk would remain extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the portal wasn't something he funded himself, enabling him to assert messianic ownership for humanity's journey into the stars. This precedes we consider the collection of Martian chromosomes and resulting transformations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for the reasons we let Mars become a long-term hope for humanity. Be it in the director's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic 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. Should someone wishes to make that questionable red-planet real estate sale, maybe they ought to begin with first making the fantasy version appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the goofiest quirks of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the various global disasters, encompassing a half-decade leap whose events are largely undepicted in the movies themselves; the films have turned into a clock radio constantly set a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of MCU content that various wikis clarify to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated romp *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so feel 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 debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by this stuff, we're in for a whole lot of frustrating stagnation in 2026, along with the related spin that actually, this confusing mess happening in front of us is essential to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that assertion will probably prove accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the further-flung future of Earth, but the new trilogy that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, starting its timeline around 2016. So by the time a pathogen that knocks out most of Earth’s human population has run its course, and also boosted the intelligence of primates, it’s only 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this contagion spreads around the world and set in 2019, looks downright eerie in the aftermath of the real-world pandemic that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; astonishingly, we’re now half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though clearly impacted by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been wiped out, and our technology definitely has not been disabled. But this most pessimistic of the four modern *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a significant bummer in store, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will unavoidably lead to violent conflict, regardless of 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 are not held by the most. Right now, it seems hard to argue with that, even though we ought to try.

Metropolis

By far the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie close to celebrating its centennial. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where rich businessmen preside over the skyscrapers as workers work tirelessly underground on the equipment that power the city. Rich surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive class divisions when he falls for Maria, an underground activist who advocates for a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans builds a automaton in her image, hoping to tear the entire Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a robot designed to mimic a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who wants to witness their downfall; it's one element flipped by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology relies on traditional human toil, which appears as a perfect fusion of conservative disdain for “the working class” and corporate enthusiasm 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 growing with the prospect of a resurgence to industrial production. The trickier, harder-to-imagine feat is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the have-nots is bridged with love; rather than with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the chance