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The date 2025 could appear more futuristic. Perhaps it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies one step beyond, a moment where we currently stand, with each futuristic advancement – primarily the widespread adoption of AI – seeming dystopian, or possibly more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology would actually function more effectively?) Didn't anyone warn us regarding this?

The response, at least concerning science fiction films made long ago (or sometimes recently) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of those warnings are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is ultimately ravaged, we will almost certainly take the ape population alongside us). Others of them are visionary; the rest just resemble poor green screen. Yet it remains valuable to explore where different film-makers, from geniuses to journeymen, believed we'd be positioned by now in our planet's development. Therefore, we shall take a look at some of the films that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they have anything to teach us.

Doom

Well, this doesn't bode well. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth can set up a scientific outpost. Currently, the negative events – regarding plot and in terms of over-the-top cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really go down for two more decades later, so should we do discover a Martian gateway now, we might have some time to avert true disaster. Were we to discover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether Elon Musk would remain extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the portal was not a thing he personally paid for, allowing him to assert messianic ownership for humanity's journey into the stars. That's before we even get to the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and subsequent mutations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is closer to 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a good test case for the reasons we let Mars become a long-term 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 new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely serve as a symbol of optimism. Should someone wishes to close that questionable Martian property deal, maybe they ought to begin with first making the fictional depiction appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the goofiest quirks of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the multiple global cataclysms, including a half-decade leap whose occurrences are largely not shown in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a alarm clock perpetually set a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that fan sites helpfully explain to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so feel quite detached from any concrete sense of time. But the bad stuff is some of the worst the studio has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're in for a great deal of annoying stagnation in 2026, including the related spin that actually, this nonsensical crap unfolding before our eyes is essential to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the actual world that claim will likely prove correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the original 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 closer to home, initiating its timeline approximately 2016. Thus, when a virus that devastates the majority of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and simultaneously boosted the intelligence of apes, it’s merely 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this contagion spreads globally and set around 2019, looks downright eerie in the aftermath of the real-world global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; astonishingly, we’re already half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though obviously impacted by the ongoing virus, was not annihilated, and our technology definitely hasn't been disabled. But this most pessimistic of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a significant downer in store, suggesting that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as either, will unavoidably result in violent conflict, no matter the efforts of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, although those instincts are not held by the most. Right now, it seems difficult to argue with that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

By far the best-known depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists preside over the towers as laborers toil underground on the machines that keep everything running. Rich 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 organizer who advocates for a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans builds a robot in her likeness, hoping to bring the whole of Metropolis down in flames. Here, a machine designed to mimic a human isn't a tool of the elite, but someone who desires to see them destroyed; it's a component inverted by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery relies on old-fashioned manual labor, which seems like a perfect union of conservative contempt for “unskilled workers” and business enthusiasm for an tech boom. It has not yet materialized, but it's easy to picture a somewhat less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise 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 have-nots is spanned with love; rather than with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the chance