🔗 Share this article

The year 2025 could appear more futuristic. Perhaps it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies one step beyond, and it's where we find ourselves, with each futuristic development – chiefly the broad integration of AI – seeming dystopian, or perhaps more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed anti-human technology would actually operate a bit better?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm regarding this?

The answer, at least regarding our sci-fi movies from years ago (or sometimes recently) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of those warnings are broadly applicable (global catastrophe) but in detail implausible (when mankind is ultimately ravaged, we will almost certainly bring down the primate species with us). Others of them are prescient; the rest just look like poor visual effects. Yet it remains 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 depicted in 2026 over the years and see if they contain any lessons to impart.

Doom

Now, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Now, the bad stuff – in terms of narrative and concerning garish cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – does not actually transpire for another 20 years later, so should we find a Martian gateway this year, we might have some time to avoid catastrophe. If we did uncover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether Elon Musk would remain super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the portal was not a thing he funded himself, enabling him to assert savior-like credit for mankind's expansion to the cosmos. This precedes we consider the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and subsequent mutations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is closer to 2046, not to be confused with 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 hope for mankind. Be it in John Carpenter's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic 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. Should someone wishes to close that questionable red-planet real estate sale, perhaps they should start with at least making the fantasy version look good.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the goofiest quirks of the present MCU is the way it handles the multiple world-threatening disasters, including a half-decade leap whose occurrences are largely undepicted in the movies themselves; the movies have turned into a clock radio perpetually set a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of Marvel stuff that various wikis clarify to be taking place in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so seem pretty unmoored from our sense of time. However 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 this stuff, we're facing a whole lot of frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the related spin that in truth, this nonsensical crap happening before our eyes is essential to whatever happens next. Even worse, 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 more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, starting its chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a pathogen that devastates most of Earth’s people has done its damage, and simultaneously boosted the intelligence of apes, it’s merely 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this virus spreads globally and set in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the wake of the actual pandemic that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re already half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly impacted by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been annihilated, and our technology certainly hasn't been disabled. Yet this most pessimistic of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a significant bummer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will inevitably result in violent conflict, no matter the work of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, although those drives are not held by the most. Right now, it feels difficult to dispute that, even though we probably should.

The Silent Classic

Easily the best-known portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie close to celebrating its 100th anniversary. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists lord over the towers as workers toil below the surface on the machines that keep everything running. Rich surface resident Freder, son 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 darker plans creates a robot in her image, aiming to tear the entire Metropolis to ruin. Here, a robot created to mimic a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who wants to see them destroyed; it's a component flipped by reality in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology relies on traditional human toil, which seems like a perfect union of rightwing contempt for “unskilled workers” and business enthusiasm for an tech boom. It has not yet materialized, but it's easy to picture a somewhat more utilitarian version of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a resurgence 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 love; not so much with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the possibility