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The date 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with every futuristic development – primarily the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – seeming bleak, or possibly more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed dehumanizing technology would actually function more effectively?) Didn't anyone warn us about this?

The response, at least regarding science fiction films made long ago (or sometimes months ago) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of these prophecies are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but in detail far-fetched (when mankind is inevitably decimated, we will most likely take the ape population with us). Others of them are visionary; others just resemble poor green screen. But it's worth examining where various directors, from geniuses to journeymen, believed we'd be positioned by this time in the world's evolution. Therefore, we shall take a look at some of the films that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they have anything to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to establish a research facility. Now, the negative events – regarding narrative and concerning garish film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really transpire for two more decades later, so should we find a portal to Mars this year, we might have some time to avert catastrophe. Were we to uncover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would remain super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the portal was not a thing he funded himself, enabling him to claim messianic credit for humanity's journey 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 (if nothing else) a good test case for the reasons we allow Mars become a long-term aspiration for humanity. Whether in John Carpenter's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely act as a beacon of optimism. Should someone wishes to make that questionable red-planet property deal, perhaps they should start with first making the fantasy version look good.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the strangest features of the current MCU is the way it handles the various global cataclysms, encompassing a half-decade leap whose events are largely undepicted in the movies themselves; the films have turned into a alarm clock constantly set a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that various wikis clarify to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated romp *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so seem pretty unmoored from our sense of time. But the poorer material is among the weakest Marvel has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're in for a great deal of annoying stagnation in 2026, along with the accompanying spin that actually, this confusing mess happening before our eyes is crucial to future events. More troublingly, in the real world that claim will likely prove accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the further-flung future of Earth, but the new trilogy that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, starting its chronology approximately 2016. Thus, when a virus that devastates most of Earth’s human population has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s merely 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this virus spreads globally and taking place around 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the real-world global health crisis that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; if you can believe it, we’re now half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously wounded by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been wiped out, and our technology certainly has not been knocked out. But this most pessimistic of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a significant bummer in store, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will inevitably result in warfare, regardless of the work of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, even if those instincts are not held by the majority. Right now, it feels hard to dispute that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

Metropolis

Easily the best-known depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists preside over the skyscrapers as laborers toil underground on the machines that power the city. Rich surface resident Freder, son of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these enormous class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground activist who preaches a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans builds a automaton in her likeness, aiming to tear the entire Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a machine designed to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but someone who wants to see them destroyed; it's one element flipped by the modern world in a future that otherwise appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology depends on traditional manual labor, which seems like a perfect fusion of conservative contempt for “unskilled workers” and corporate zeal for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's easy to imagine a slightly more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a resurgence to industrial production. The trickier, harder-to-imagine feat is the ending of the film, where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is bridged with love; not so much with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the chance