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The date 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 represents a leap forward, a moment where we find ourselves, with every futuristic development – primarily the widespread adoption of AI – appearing bleak, or possibly more grim. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed dehumanizing technology would actually operate more effectively?) Did no one warn us about this?

The answer, particularly regarding our sci-fi movies made long ago (or sometimes months ago) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of those warnings are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but specifically far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably decimated, we will most likely take the ape population with us). Others of them are prescient; the rest just look like bad green screen. But it's worth examining where different film-makers, from geniuses to grunts, believed we'd be situated by this time in the world's evolution. Therefore, we shall examine a selection of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they have anything to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this doesn't bode well. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can set up a scientific outpost. Currently, the negative events – regarding narrative and concerning garish cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – does not actually go down for two more decades later, so even if we find a portal to Mars now, we might have some time to avoid true disaster. Were we to discover a portal to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether Elon Musk would remain extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the discovery wasn't something he funded himself, allowing him to claim savior-like ownership for mankind's expansion to the cosmos. This precedes we even get to the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and resulting transformations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's 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. Be it in John Carpenter's chintzy 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 hope. Should someone wants to close that questionable Martian real estate sale, maybe they should start with at least making the fantasy version appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the goofiest quirks of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the multiple world-threatening disasters, including a half-decade leap whose occurrences are largely not shown in the films themselves; the films have become like a alarm clock constantly set a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. So there's a large assortment of MCU content that various wikis helpfully explain to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, take place distant from Earth, and so feel pretty detached from any concrete sense of time. However the poorer material is among the weakest Marvel has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're facing a great deal of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the related narrative that actually, this confusing mess happening before our eyes is essential to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will likely prove correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the further-flung future of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, initiating its timeline around 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that knocks out most of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and also boosted the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s merely 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this virus spreads around the world and set in 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re already half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though clearly impacted by the ongoing virus, hasn't been annihilated, and our technology certainly has not been disabled. Yet this bleakest of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a significant bummer to offer, implying that human and/or ape nature, however one defines either, will unavoidably lead to violent conflict, regardless of the work of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, although those drives don't represent the most. Currently, it seems hard to argue with that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

By far the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to marking its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists preside over the skyscrapers as laborers toil underground on the machines that power the city. Affluent city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these enormous class divisions when he falls for Maria, an underground activist who preaches a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans creates a robot in her likeness, aiming to tear the whole of Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a machine designed to imitate a human isn't a tool of the elite, but an entity who desires to witness their downfall; it's one element flipped by reality in a future that otherwise seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery depends on old-fashioned manual labor, which seems like a most logical fusion of conservative contempt for “unskilled workers” and business zeal for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's simple to picture a slightly less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a resurgence to manufacturing. The more complex, less plausible feat is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is bridged with love; not so much with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the possibility