The year 2025 might sound more futuristic. Maybe it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies one step beyond, and it's where we find ourselves, with each science-fiction-style development – primarily the broad integration of artificial intelligence – appearing bleak, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed anti-human technology would actually operate a bit better?) Didn't anyone warn us regarding this?
The answer, particularly regarding science fiction films made long ago (or occasionally recently) set in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail implausible (when mankind is ultimately decimated, we will almost certainly bring down the primate species with us). Some of them are prescient; others just look like bad visual effects. But it's worth examining where different directors, from geniuses to journeymen, believed we'd be positioned by now in the world's development. Therefore, we shall take a look at some of the films that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and determine if they contain any lessons to impart.
Now, this doesn't bode well. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Currently, the negative events – regarding narrative and in terms of over-the-top film versions of a FPS video game – does not actually go down for another 20 years later, so even if we find a portal to Mars now, we could gain some time to avert true disaster. If we did uncover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would still be extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the portal wasn't something he funded himself, allowing him to assert messianic ownership for mankind's expansion into the stars. This precedes we even get to the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent mutations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with 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. Whether in the director's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to serve as a symbol of optimism. If anyone wants to close that dubious red-planet real estate sale, maybe they ought to begin with first ensuring the fictional depiction look good.
A of the goofiest quirks of the present MCU is the way it handles the multiple world-threatening disasters, including a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are largely undepicted in the films themselves; the films have turned into a alarm clock perpetually running a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of MCU content that various wikis helpfully explain to be taking place in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so feel quite detached from our sense of time. However the poorer material is among the weakest Marvel has ever produced: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by this stuff, we're in for a whole lot of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, including the related spin that actually, this confusing mess happening in front of us is crucial to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the real world that claim will likely turn out to be accurate.
The majority of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, initiating its timeline approximately 2016. Thus, when a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and also boosted the intelligence of primates, it’s only 2026, with additional human indignities (and victories for apes) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this contagion spreads globally and set around 2019, looks downright eerie in the aftermath of the actual global health crisis that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re now half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though clearly wounded by the still-spreading virus, was not annihilated, and technological infrastructure certainly has not been disabled. Yet this bleakest of the four modern *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a substantial bummer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will inevitably lead to violent conflict, regardless of the work of the best-intentioned among us. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, although those instincts don't represent the majority. Right now, it feels hard to dispute that, despite the fact that we ought to try.
By far the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie close to marking its centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists preside over the skyscrapers as workers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that power the city. Affluent city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these massive social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground organizer who advocates for a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans creates a robot in her likeness, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a robot created to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but an entity who wants to witness their downfall; it's one element inverted by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology depends on traditional human toil, which seems like a most logical union of conservative disdain for “the working class” and corporate zeal for an tech boom. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's simple to picture a slightly less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a return to industrial production. The more complex, less plausible accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is bridged with love; rather than with concrete reforms. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the chance
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