🔗 Share this article

The date 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies a leap forward, a moment where we currently stand, with every futuristic advancement – chiefly the widespread adoption of AI – appearing dystopian, or possibly even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed anti-human technology might function a bit better?) Didn't anyone warn us regarding this?

The response, particularly concerning science fiction films made long ago (or sometimes months ago) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of those warnings are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but in detail implausible (if humanity is inevitably ravaged, we will most likely bring down the ape population alongside us). Others of them are visionary; others just look like bad visual effects. Yet it remains worth examining where various film-makers, ranging from masters to journeymen, believed we'd be positioned by now in our planet's development. So let's take a look at some of the films that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and determine if they have anything to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to set up a research facility. Currently, the bad stuff – in terms of plot and concerning over-the-top cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really transpire for two more decades in the future, so even if we do discover a portal to Mars now, we could gain a respite to avoid true disaster. If we did discover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would remain super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the discovery was not a thing he funded himself, allowing him to claim savior-like credit for humanity's journey to the cosmos. This precedes we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent mutations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for why, exactly we allow Mars become a stretch-goal aspiration for mankind. Be it in John Carpenter's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely act as a beacon of optimism. Should someone wants to make that dubious Martian property deal, maybe they should start with at least ensuring the fantasy version look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the goofiest quirks of the present MCU is how to account for the various global cataclysms, including a half-decade leap whose events are largely undepicted in the movies themselves; the films have become like a clock radio constantly set a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. So there's 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 underrated romp *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so seem quite unmoored from any concrete sense of time. However the bad stuff is some of the worst the studio has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're in for a whole lot of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, including 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* 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* begins closer to home, starting its timeline approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out the majority of Earth’s human population has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of apes, it’s only 2026, with further human indignities (and victories for apes) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this virus spreads around the world and taking place around 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the wake of the real-world pandemic that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re already six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though clearly wounded by the ongoing virus, was not annihilated, and technological infrastructure certainly has not been disabled. But this bleakest of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a substantial bummer in store, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines either, will unavoidably result in violent conflict, regardless of the efforts of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, although those drives are not held by the majority. Currently, it seems difficult to argue with that, even though we ought to try.

Metropolis

Easily the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie close to celebrating its centennial. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists preside over the towers as workers toil below the surface on the equipment that power the city. Rich surface resident Freder, son of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these massive social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground organizer who advocates for a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans creates a automaton in her likeness, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a machine created to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but an entity who wants to witness their downfall; it's one element inverted by the modern world in a future that in other ways seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology relies on old-fashioned manual labor, which seems like a most logical fusion of conservative disdain for “the working class” and business zeal for an tech boom. It has not yet materialized, but it's simple to picture a somewhat less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a return to manufacturing. The more complex, less plausible feat is the ending of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the have-nots is spanned with compassion; rather than with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the chance