🔗 Share this article

The year 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 represents one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style development – chiefly the widespread adoption of AI – appearing dystopian, or possibly more grim. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed dehumanizing technology might operate more effectively?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm about this?

The response, at least regarding science fiction films from years ago (or sometimes recently) set in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is ultimately decimated, we will most likely bring down the ape population with us). Others of them are visionary; others just resemble bad visual effects. But it's valuable to explore where various film-makers, from geniuses to grunts, thought we'd be positioned by this time in the world's development. So let's take a look at some of the movies that have been set in 2026 over the years and determine if they contain any lessons to teach us.

Doom

Now, this isn't promising. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – in terms of plot and concerning over-the-top cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually go down for another 20 years later, so even if we do discover a Martian gateway now, we might have a respite to avert catastrophe. Were we to discover a portal to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would still be extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the discovery wasn't something he personally paid for, allowing him to claim savior-like ownership for mankind's expansion to the cosmos. That's before we even get to the collection of Martian chromosomes and resulting transformations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for the reasons we let Mars serve as a long-term aspiration for humanity. Be it in the director's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to act as a symbol of hope. Should someone wants to close that dubious red-planet real estate sale, perhaps they ought to begin with at least ensuring the fantasy version look good.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the strangest features of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the multiple world-threatening cataclysms, including a half-decade leap whose events are largely not shown in the movies themselves; the films have turned into a clock radio perpetually running a few minutes fast – only instead of 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 good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated adventure *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so feel quite unmoored from our sense of time. But the bad stuff is among the weakest the studio has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're facing a whole lot of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, including the related spin that actually, this confusing mess happening before our eyes is essential to future events. Even worse, in the real world that assertion will probably prove correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the classic five-film *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* begins closer to home, starting its chronology approximately 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that knocks out most of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and simultaneously boosted the intelligence of primates, it’s only 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this virus spreads around the world and set around 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the wake of the real-world pandemic that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; astonishingly, we’re already half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though obviously impacted by the ongoing virus, was not annihilated, and our technology certainly hasn't been disabled. But this bleakest of the four modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a significant downer to offer, implying that human and/or ape nature, however one defines each, will unavoidably lead to violent conflict, regardless of the efforts of the best-intentioned among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, although those instincts are not held by the majority. Currently, it feels difficult to dispute that, even though we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

By far the most prominent depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to marking its 100th anniversary. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists preside over the skyscrapers as workers toil below the surface on the equipment that power the city. Affluent city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these enormous social gaps when he falls for Maria, an underground activist who advocates for a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans creates a robot in her image, aiming to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. Here, a machine created to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who desires to see them destroyed; it's one element inverted by reality in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology depends on old-fashioned manual labor, which seems like a perfect fusion of rightwing contempt for “unskilled workers” and business zeal for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's simple to imagine a somewhat more utilitarian version of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a return to manufacturing. The more complex, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the poor is bridged with love; rather than with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the possibility