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The year 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies a leap forward, a moment where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style advancement – chiefly the broad integration of artificial intelligence – seeming dystopian, or possibly even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed anti-human technology might function more effectively?) Did no one sound the alarm regarding this?

The answer, particularly regarding science fiction films from years ago (or sometimes recently) set in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of these prophecies are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but specifically far-fetched (when mankind is ultimately decimated, we will almost certainly bring down the primate species with us). Others of them are visionary; others just look like bad visual effects. Yet it remains worth examining where different directors, ranging from masters to grunts, believed we'd be situated by now in the world's evolution. Therefore, we shall examine a selection of the movies that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they have anything to impart.

Doom

Well, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to set up a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – in terms of plot and in terms of garish cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – does not actually go down for two more decades in the future, so should we find a portal to Mars this year, we might have a respite to avert catastrophe. If we did discover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would still be extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the discovery was not a thing he personally paid for, allowing him to claim messianic credit for humanity's journey into the stars. That's before we even get to the collection 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 good test case for the reasons we allow Mars serve as a stretch-goal hope for humanity. Whether in John Carpenter's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to serve as a symbol of optimism. If anyone wants to make that questionable Martian property deal, maybe they should start with at least ensuring the fictional depiction appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the goofiest quirks of the present MCU is the way it handles the various world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a half-decade leap whose events are largely undepicted in the movies themselves; the movies have turned into a clock radio perpetually set a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's years. So there's a whole bunch of MCU content that fan sites helpfully explain to be set in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so seem pretty detached from our sense of time. But the poorer material is among the weakest the studio has ever produced: the nonsensically meandering 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 in truth, this confusing mess happening in front of us is essential to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that assertion will likely turn out to be correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the more distant future of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, starting its timeline around 2016. So by the time a virus that devastates the majority of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and simultaneously boosted the intelligence of apes, it’s only 2026, with further human indignities (and simian triumphs) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this virus spreads globally and taking place around 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the wake of the real-world pandemic that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; astonishingly, we’re already half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly impacted by the still-spreading virus, was not annihilated, and technological infrastructure definitely has not been disabled. Yet this bleakest of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a significant downer to offer, implying that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as either, will inevitably result in violent conflict, no matter the work of the most well-meaning among us. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, even if those drives are not held by the most. Currently, it feels hard to argue with that, even though we probably should.

The Silent Classic

Easily the most prominent portrayal 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 futuristic city where wealthy industrialists lord over the skyscrapers as laborers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that power the city. Rich surface resident Freder, son of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these enormous class divisions when he falls for Maria, an subterranean activist who advocates for a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans creates a robot in her likeness, hoping to bring the whole of Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a robot created to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but someone who wants to see them destroyed; it's a component flipped by reality in a future that otherwise appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology depends on traditional human toil, which appears as a most logical union of conservative contempt for “the working class” and business zeal for an tech boom. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's easy to picture a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a return to manufacturing. The trickier, less plausible accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is spanned with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the chance