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The date 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies one step beyond, a moment where we currently stand, with every futuristic development – chiefly the broad integration of artificial intelligence – seeming dystopian, or possibly even worse. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed dehumanizing technology would actually operate more effectively?) Did no one warn us regarding this?

The answer, particularly concerning our sci-fi movies from years ago (or sometimes recently) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably decimated, we will most likely take the primate species alongside us). Some of them are visionary; others just look like bad green screen. Yet it remains worth examining where different directors, ranging from masters to grunts, thought we'd be situated by this time in our planet's evolution. So let's examine a selection of the films that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they contain any lessons to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this doesn't bode well. 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 discovers a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can establish a scientific outpost. Currently, the negative events – in terms of plot and in terms of garish film versions of a FPS video game – doesn't really transpire for another 20 years in the future, so should we find a Martian gateway this year, we might have some time to avert catastrophe. If we did discover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether Elon Musk would still be super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the discovery wasn't something he personally paid for, allowing him to claim messianic ownership for humanity's expansion into the stars. That's before we consider the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent transformations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for why, exactly we let Mars serve as a long-term hope for humanity. Be it in the director's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to act as a beacon of hope. Should someone wishes to make that questionable Martian property deal, maybe they should start with first ensuring the fantasy version appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the strangest features of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the various world-threatening disasters, including a half-decade leap whose events are largely not shown in the movies themselves; the films have become like a clock radio perpetually running a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that various wikis helpfully explain to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so feel quite unmoored from our sense of time. However the poorer material is some of the worst Marvel has ever produced: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're in for a great deal of frustrating stagnation in 2026, along with the accompanying narrative that in truth, this nonsensical crap unfolding in front of us is essential to future events. More troublingly, in the actual world that assertion will likely prove correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, starting its chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a pathogen that devastates most of Earth’s human population has run its course, and also boosted the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s merely 2026, with further human indignities (and victories for apes) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this contagion spreads globally and set around 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual global health crisis that would begin 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 obviously wounded by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been annihilated, and our technology definitely hasn't been knocked out. Yet this bleakest of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a substantial bummer in store, suggesting that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably lead to warfare, no matter the efforts of the most well-meaning among us. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, even if those instincts are not held by the most. Right now, it seems hard to dispute that, despite the fact that we probably should.

The Silent Classic

Easily the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing celebrating its centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where wealthy industrialists lord over the skyscrapers as workers toil below the surface on the equipment that keep everything running. Affluent city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these enormous social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground organizer who preaches a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans builds 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 see them destroyed; it's one element flipped by reality in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology relies on traditional manual labor, which seems like a most logical union of rightwing disdain for “unskilled workers” and corporate zeal for an tech boom. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's simple to imagine a somewhat less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city expanding out 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 have-nots is spanned with compassion; not so much with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the possibility