The year 2025 might sound more futuristic. Maybe it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 represents a leap forward, a moment where we find ourselves, with every futuristic development – chiefly the broad integration of artificial intelligence – appearing dystopian, or perhaps more grim. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology might function a bit better?) Didn't anyone warn us about this?
The answer, particularly regarding science fiction films from years ago (or sometimes recently) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of those warnings are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but specifically implausible (when mankind is inevitably ravaged, we will most likely bring down the primate species with us). Others of them are visionary; others just look like poor green screen. Yet it remains worth examining where different film-makers, ranging from masters to journeymen, believed we'd be positioned by now in our planet's evolution. Therefore, we shall take a look at some of the movies that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they have anything to teach us.
Doom
Well, this doesn't bode well. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Currently, the negative events – in terms of narrative and concerning over-the-top cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – doesn't really go down for two more decades later, so even if we do discover a portal to Mars now, we could gain some time to avert catastrophe. If we did uncover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether Elon Musk would still be extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the portal wasn't something he funded himself, allowing him to claim savior-like ownership for humanity's expansion to the cosmos. That's before we even get to the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting transformations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for the reasons we let Mars become a long-term hope for humanity. Be it in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely serve as a beacon of optimism. Should someone wants to make that dubious Martian property deal, perhaps they ought to begin with at least ensuring the fictional depiction look good.
The Marvel Dregs
A of the strangest features of the present MCU is the way it handles the various global cataclysms, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose events are mostly undepicted in the films themselves; the films have become like a alarm clock perpetually running a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that fan sites clarify 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 seem quite detached from any concrete sense of time. However the poorer material is among the weakest Marvel has created: the convoluted and aimless 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, including the accompanying narrative that in truth, this confusing mess unfolding in front of us is crucial to future events. More troublingly, in the real world that assertion will likely prove correct.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
The majority of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the more distant 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 around 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that devastates most of Earth’s people has done its damage, and simultaneously enhanced the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s merely 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this virus spreads globally and taking place in 2019, looks downright eerie in the wake of the actual pandemic that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; astonishingly, we’re now six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly impacted by the ongoing virus, was not wiped out, and technological infrastructure definitely has not been disabled. But this most pessimistic of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a significant bummer in store, implying that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as either, will unavoidably result in violent conflict, regardless of the efforts of the most well-meaning among us. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, although those instincts are not held by the most. Currently, it seems difficult to argue with that, even though we ought to try.
Metropolis
By far the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen preside over the towers as laborers work tirelessly underground on the machines that keep everything running. Rich city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive class divisions when he falls for Maria, an underground organizer who advocates for a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans creates a robot in her image, hoping to bring the entire Metropolis to ruin. Here, a machine designed to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but someone who desires to see them destroyed; it's one element inverted by the modern world in a future that otherwise seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology depends on traditional manual labor, which seems like a most logical union of rightwing contempt for “unskilled workers” and business zeal for an tech boom. It has not yet materialized, but it's easy to picture a somewhat less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a resurgence to industrial production. The trickier, less plausible feat is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is spanned with love; rather than with concrete reforms. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the chance
