🔗 Share this article

The year 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 represents a leap forward, and it's where we find ourselves, with each science-fiction-style advancement – primarily the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – appearing bleak, or possibly even worse. (Doesn't it feel 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 answer, particularly concerning our sci-fi movies from years ago (or occasionally recently) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of those warnings are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (when mankind is inevitably ravaged, we will most likely bring down the primate species alongside us). Some of them are visionary; others just resemble poor visual effects. But it's valuable to explore where various film-makers, ranging from masters to grunts, believed we'd be situated by this time in our planet's development. Therefore, we shall take a look at some of the films that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they contain any lessons to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this isn't promising. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can set up a scientific outpost. Now, the bad stuff – regarding narrative and concerning over-the-top cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – doesn't really transpire for another 20 years later, so should we find a portal to Mars this year, we might have a respite to avoid true disaster. Were we to discover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether Elon Musk would still be extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the portal wasn't something he personally paid for, enabling him to assert savior-like ownership for mankind's expansion into the stars. This precedes we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting transformations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for the reasons we let Mars become a long-term hope for mankind. Be it in John Carpenter's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to act as a beacon of optimism. Should someone wants to close that questionable Martian real estate sale, maybe they ought to begin with first making the fantasy version appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the strangest features of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the various world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose events are largely undepicted in the movies themselves; the films have turned into a clock radio perpetually running a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's years. So there's a whole bunch of MCU content that various wikis clarify to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so seem pretty detached from our sense of time. However the bad stuff is some of the worst Marvel has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by this stuff, we're facing a whole lot of annoying stagnation in 2026, along with the accompanying narrative that in truth, this confusing mess happening before our eyes is essential to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the real world that claim will likely prove accurate.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is located in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, starting its chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that devastates the majority of Earth’s human population has run its course, and also enhanced the intelligence of apes, it’s only 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this virus spreads around the world and taking place around 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the real-world pandemic that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; astonishingly, we’re already six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though obviously wounded by the ongoing virus, hasn't been annihilated, and our technology definitely has not been disabled. Yet this bleakest of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a significant downer in store, implying that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as either, will inevitably result in warfare, no matter the work of the best-intentioned among us. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, even if those drives are not held by the most. Currently, it seems difficult to dispute that, despite the fact that we probably should.

Metropolis

Easily the best-known portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie close to marking its centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen preside over the towers as workers work tirelessly underground on the machines that power the city. Rich city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these massive class divisions when he falls for Maria, an underground activist who advocates for a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans creates a automaton in her image, aiming to bring the whole of Metropolis down in flames. Here, a robot designed to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but someone 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 human toil, which appears as a most logical fusion of conservative disdain for “the working class” and business enthusiasm for an tech boom. It has not yet come to pass, but it's simple to imagine a somewhat less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a resurgence to industrial production. The more complex, less plausible feat is the ending of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the poor is bridged with compassion; rather than with concrete reforms. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the chance