🔗 Share this article

The year 2025 might sound more futuristic. Maybe it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies a leap forward, a moment where we currently stand, with each science-fiction-style development – chiefly the broad integration of artificial intelligence – appearing dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed anti-human technology would actually operate more effectively?) Did no one warn us about this?

The response, at least regarding science fiction films from years ago (or sometimes months ago) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of these prophecies are broadly applicable (global catastrophe) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably decimated, we will almost certainly bring down the primate species alongside us). Some of them are prescient; others just resemble poor green screen. But it's worth examining where various film-makers, from geniuses to grunts, believed we'd be situated by now in our planet's evolution. Therefore, we shall examine at some of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and determine if they have anything to teach us.

Doom

Well, this isn't promising. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth can set up a scientific outpost. Now, the bad stuff – in terms of narrative and concerning over-the-top cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – doesn't really transpire for another 20 years in the future, so should we do discover a Martian gateway this year, we could gain some time to avert true disaster. If we did discover a portal to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would remain extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the portal was not a thing he funded himself, allowing him to claim savior-like credit for mankind's expansion to the cosmos. This precedes we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting transformations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for why, exactly we let Mars become a long-term aspiration for humanity. Whether in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to act as a symbol of hope. If anyone wishes to close that questionable red-planet real estate sale, maybe they ought to begin with first making the fantasy version look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the strangest features of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the various global disasters, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose events are mostly undepicted in the films themselves; the films have turned into a clock radio constantly set a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. So there's a large assortment of Marvel stuff that fan sites clarify to be taking place in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, take place distant from Earth, and so feel quite detached from any concrete sense of time. But the bad stuff is some of the worst the studio has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're facing a great deal of annoying stagnation in 2026, including the related narrative that actually, this confusing mess unfolding in front of us is crucial to future events. More troublingly, in the actual world that assertion will probably turn out to be accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is located in the further-flung future of Earth, but the new trilogy that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, initiating its timeline approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out the majority of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of apes, it’s only 2026, with additional human indignities (and victories for apes) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this virus spreads globally 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 less literal; if you can believe it, we’re already six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though clearly wounded by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been annihilated, and our technology definitely hasn't been disabled. But this bleakest of the four modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a significant downer in store, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines either, will inevitably lead to warfare, regardless of the work of the best-intentioned among us. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, even if those instincts are not held by the most. Currently, it seems hard to dispute that, even though we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

By far the best-known depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing marking its centennial. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists preside over the towers as laborers toil below the surface on the equipment that keep everything running. Rich city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these massive class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground activist who preaches a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans creates a robot in her likeness, aiming to bring the entire Metropolis down in flames. Here, a robot designed to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who wants to witness their downfall; it's a component flipped by reality in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery relies on traditional manual labor, which seems like a perfect fusion of conservative disdain for “the working class” and business enthusiasm for an tech boom. It has not yet materialized, but it's easy to imagine a somewhat less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a return to manufacturing. The more complex, less plausible feat is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the poor is spanned with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the chance