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The year 2025 might sound more futuristic. Perhaps it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies one step beyond, a moment where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style development – primarily the broad integration of artificial intelligence – seeming dystopian, or possibly more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed dehumanizing technology might function a bit better?) Didn't anyone warn us about this?

The response, particularly regarding science fiction films made long ago (or occasionally recently) set in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of those warnings are broadly applicable (global catastrophe) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably decimated, we will almost certainly bring down the ape population alongside us). Some of them are visionary; others just resemble bad visual effects. Yet it remains valuable to explore where different film-makers, ranging from masters to grunts, believed we'd be situated by now in our planet's evolution. So let's take a look a selection of the movies that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they have anything to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this doesn't bode well. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to set up a research facility. Now, the bad stuff – in terms of narrative and in terms of 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 a respite to avoid true disaster. If we did uncover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether Elon Musk would remain super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the portal was not a thing he funded himself, enabling him to assert messianic ownership for mankind's journey into the stars. That's before we even get to the collection of Martian chromosomes and subsequent mutations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for the reasons we let Mars become a stretch-goal aspiration for mankind. Whether in John Carpenter's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to act as a symbol of hope. If anyone wants to close that dubious Martian real estate sale, maybe they should start with first making the fictional depiction look good.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the strangest features of the present MCU is how to account for the multiple world-threatening disasters, including a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are mostly undepicted in the movies themselves; the movies have turned into a clock radio constantly running a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of MCU content that fan sites helpfully explain to be set 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 pretty detached from our sense of time. However the poorer material is some of the worst Marvel has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're facing a whole lot of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, including the accompanying spin that actually, this confusing mess unfolding in front of us is essential to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that assertion will likely turn out to be correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the more distant future of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, starting its timeline approximately 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that knocks out the majority of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and also boosted the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s merely 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this contagion spreads globally and set in 2019, appears downright eerie in the aftermath of the actual global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re now six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly wounded by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been annihilated, and our technology certainly hasn't been knocked out. Yet this most pessimistic of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a substantial downer in store, suggesting that human and/or ape nature, however one defines either, will unavoidably result in violent conflict, regardless of the work of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, although those instincts don't represent the most. Currently, it seems difficult to dispute that, even though we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

Easily the best-known portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing marking its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen preside over the towers as laborers work tirelessly below the surface on the equipment that keep everything running. Affluent city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these enormous social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean activist who preaches a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans creates a automaton in her likeness, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis to ruin. Here, a machine created to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but an entity who desires to see them destroyed; it's one element flipped by reality in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery depends on old-fashioned manual labor, which appears as a most logical union of rightwing disdain for “unskilled workers” and corporate zeal for an AI bubble. It has not yet come to pass, but it's simple to picture a slightly more utilitarian version of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a resurgence to manufacturing. The more complex, less plausible feat is the ending of the film, where the gap between the haves and the have-nots 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