🔗 Share this article

The year 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies one step beyond, and it's where we find ourselves, with every futuristic advancement – chiefly the broad integration of artificial intelligence – appearing bleak, or perhaps more grim. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed dehumanizing technology might operate a bit better?) Didn't anyone warn us regarding this?

The response, particularly regarding our sci-fi movies from years ago (or sometimes months ago) set in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail implausible (when mankind is inevitably ravaged, we will most likely take the ape population with us). Some of them are visionary; others just look like bad visual effects. But it's valuable to explore where various directors, from geniuses to journeymen, believed we'd be situated by now in our planet's evolution. Therefore, we shall take a look at some of the films that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they contain any lessons to teach us.

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 discovers a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth can set up a scientific outpost. Currently, the negative events – in terms of narrative and concerning over-the-top film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really transpire for two more decades later, so even if we do discover a portal to Mars now, we might have a respite to avert catastrophe. Were we to discover a portal to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether Elon Musk would still be super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the discovery was not a thing he funded himself, allowing him to claim messianic credit for mankind's journey to the cosmos. That's before we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent transformations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is closer to 2046, not to be confused with the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a good test case for the reasons we allow Mars become a stretch-goal aspiration for humanity. Whether in John Carpenter's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to serve as a beacon of optimism. If anyone wishes to make that dubious Martian real estate sale, perhaps they should start with at least making the fictional depiction look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the goofiest quirks of the present MCU is the way it handles the multiple global cataclysms, encompassing a half-decade leap whose events are mostly not shown in the films themselves; the movies have become like a alarm clock constantly set a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of MCU content that fan sites helpfully explain to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated romp *The Marvels*, take place distant from Earth, and so seem pretty unmoored from our sense of time. But the bad stuff is some of the worst Marvel has created: 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 in for a great deal of frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the related spin that actually, this nonsensical crap happening before our eyes is essential to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will likely prove correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the further-flung future of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, starting its timeline approximately 2016. Thus, when a virus that knocks out the majority of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of primates, it’s merely 2026, with additional human indignities (and victories for apes) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this contagion spreads around the world and set in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual pandemic that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; astonishingly, we’re now half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly impacted by the ongoing virus, hasn't been annihilated, and our technology certainly has not been disabled. But this most pessimistic of the four modern *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a substantial downer in store, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines each, will inevitably result in warfare, no matter the work of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, even if those drives don't represent the majority. Currently, it seems difficult to argue with that, despite the fact that we probably should.

The Silent Classic

Easily the best-known portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing celebrating its centennial. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists lord over the towers as workers toil underground on the equipment that power the city. Rich surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these massive social gaps when he falls for Maria, an underground activist who preaches a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans creates a robot in her likeness, hoping to tear the entire Metropolis down in flames. Here, a machine designed to imitate 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 appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology relies on old-fashioned manual labor, which seems like a perfect union of rightwing contempt for “unskilled workers” and business zeal for an AI bubble. It has not yet materialized, but it's easy to imagine a somewhat more utilitarian version of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a return to industrial production. The more complex, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is bridged with love; rather than with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the chance