🔗 Share this article

The date 2025 could appear more futuristic. Perhaps it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with each science-fiction-style advancement – primarily the broad integration of AI – seeming dystopian, or perhaps more grim. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed dehumanizing technology might operate more effectively?) Did no one warn us regarding this?

The response, at least concerning science fiction films made long 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 implausible (if humanity is inevitably ravaged, we will most likely bring down the primate species alongside us). Some of them are prescient; others just resemble bad visual effects. Yet it remains valuable to explore where different directors, from geniuses to grunts, thought we'd be situated by this time in our planet's evolution. Therefore, we shall take a look a selection of the films that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and see if they contain any lessons to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this doesn't bode well. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth can establish a research facility. Currently, the bad stuff – in terms of plot and in terms of 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 a respite to avoid catastrophe. If we did uncover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would remain extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the discovery was not a thing he personally paid for, allowing him to assert messianic credit for mankind's journey into the stars. That's before we consider the harvesting of Martian chromosomes 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 why, exactly we let Mars serve as a long-term aspiration for humanity. Be it in John Carpenter's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely act as a beacon of hope. Should someone wants to close that questionable red-planet property deal, perhaps they should start with first making the fantasy version appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the goofiest quirks of the current MCU is the way it handles the various global cataclysms, including a five-year time-jump whose events are mostly undepicted in the movies themselves; the movies have turned into a clock radio perpetually running a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a large assortment of Marvel stuff that various wikis clarify to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, take place distant from Earth, and so feel pretty unmoored from any concrete 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 remote-meeting debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by this stuff, we're facing a great deal of annoying stagnation in 2026, including the accompanying narrative that actually, this nonsensical crap unfolding before our eyes is crucial to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the real world that claim will probably prove correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, initiating its chronology around 2016. So by the time a pathogen that knocks out most of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously boosted the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s merely 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this contagion spreads around the world and set around 2019, looks downright eerie in the wake of the real-world pandemic that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; if you can believe it, we’re already six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly impacted by the ongoing virus, hasn't been annihilated, and technological infrastructure definitely has not been knocked out. Yet this bleakest of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a substantial bummer to offer, suggesting that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as either, will inevitably lead to warfare, no matter the work of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, although those drives are not held by the most. Right now, it seems difficult to dispute that, even though we probably should.

Metropolis

Easily the most prominent depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where rich businessmen preside over the skyscrapers as workers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that power the city. Rich surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these enormous class divisions when he falls for Maria, an underground activist who advocates for a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans builds a robot in her likeness, aiming to tear the whole of Metropolis to ruin. Here, a robot designed to mimic a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who desires to see them destroyed; it's a component flipped by reality in a future that otherwise appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery depends on traditional manual labor, which appears as a most logical union of conservative disdain for “the working class” and business enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's easy to picture a somewhat less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The more complex, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the gap between the haves and the poor is bridged with love; rather than with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the possibility