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The date 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style advancement – chiefly the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – seeming bleak, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed dehumanizing technology might function a bit better?) Did no one warn us about this?

The answer, at least regarding science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally months ago) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of those warnings are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (when mankind is inevitably decimated, we will most likely bring down the ape population alongside us). Some of them are prescient; the rest just look like bad visual effects. Yet it remains worth examining where various directors, from geniuses to journeymen, thought we'd be situated by this time in our planet's development. Therefore, we shall examine a selection of the films that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and determine if they have anything to impart.

Doom

Now, this isn't promising. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth can establish a scientific outpost. Currently, the negative events – in terms of plot and concerning garish cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – doesn't really go down for two more decades in the future, so even if we do discover a Martian gateway now, we could gain a respite to avert catastrophe. Were we to discover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether Elon Musk would remain extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the discovery was not a thing he funded himself, allowing him to claim savior-like ownership for humanity's journey into the stars. This precedes we even get to the collection of Martian chromosomes and resulting mutations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a good test case for the reasons we let Mars serve as a long-term hope for humanity. Be it in the director's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely serve as a symbol of optimism. If anyone wants to make that questionable red-planet real estate sale, perhaps they should start with first ensuring the fantasy version look good.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the strangest features of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the various world-threatening disasters, including a half-decade leap whose occurrences are mostly undepicted in the movies themselves; the films have become like a alarm clock constantly running a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that various wikis clarify to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated adventure *The Marvels*, take place distant from Earth, and so feel pretty unmoored from our sense of time. But the poorer material is some of the worst Marvel 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 great deal of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the accompanying spin that actually, this confusing mess unfolding before our eyes is crucial to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that assertion will likely prove accurate.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the more distant 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 done its damage, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of primates, it’s only 2026, with further human indignities (and simian triumphs) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this virus spreads globally and set in 2019, appears downright eerie in the aftermath of the actual global health crisis that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; astonishingly, we’re now six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly impacted by the ongoing virus, was not wiped out, and our technology definitely has not been disabled. Yet this bleakest of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a significant bummer in store, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines either, will unavoidably result in warfare, no matter the work of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, although those drives are not held by the most. Currently, it seems difficult to argue with that, even though we ought to try.

Metropolis

By far the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing celebrating its centennial. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set 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 city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive social gaps when he falls for Maria, an subterranean activist who preaches a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans creates a automaton in her likeness, hoping to tear the entire Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a robot designed to imitate a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who wants to see them destroyed; it's one element inverted by the modern world in a future that in other ways seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery relies on old-fashioned manual labor, which seems like a perfect union of conservative disdain for “unskilled workers” and business zeal for an tech boom. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's simple to picture a somewhat less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a resurgence to industrial production. The more complex, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is spanned with compassion; not so much with concrete reforms. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the possibility