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The date 2025 could appear more futuristic. Maybe it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 represents one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with each science-fiction-style advancement – chiefly the widespread adoption of AI – seeming dystopian, or possibly more grim. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed dehumanizing technology might function more effectively?) Did no one sound the alarm regarding this?

The response, particularly regarding science fiction films from years ago (or sometimes recently) set in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of these prophecies are broadly applicable (global catastrophe) but in detail implausible (if humanity is ultimately ravaged, we will almost certainly bring down the ape population with us). Others of them are prescient; others just look like poor green screen. But it's worth examining where various directors, from geniuses to grunts, thought we'd be positioned by now in the world's evolution. Therefore, we shall take a look a selection of the movies that have been set in 2026 over the years and determine if they contain any lessons to teach us.

Doom

Well, this isn't promising. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can set up a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – in terms of narrative and in terms of over-the-top film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really transpire for another 20 years later, so even if we find a Martian gateway this year, we could gain some time to avert true disaster. If we did discover a portal to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would still be super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the discovery wasn't something he personally paid for, enabling him to claim messianic ownership for humanity's journey to the cosmos. That's before we consider 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 (if nothing else) a useful example for the reasons we let Mars become a stretch-goal hope for mankind. Be it in John Carpenter's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely serve as a beacon of optimism. If anyone wishes to make that dubious red-planet property deal, perhaps they should start with first ensuring the fictional depiction appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the goofiest quirks of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the multiple global cataclysms, encompassing a half-decade leap whose events are mostly not shown in the films themselves; the movies have turned into a clock radio constantly running a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that fan sites helpfully explain to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated romp *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so feel pretty detached from our sense of time. However the poorer material is some of the worst Marvel has ever produced: 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 annoying stagnation in 2026, along with the accompanying spin that in truth, this confusing mess unfolding in front of us is crucial to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that assertion will likely prove accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, starting its chronology around 2016. So by the time a pathogen that knocks out most of Earth’s people has done its damage, and simultaneously boosted the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s merely 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this contagion spreads globally and taking place in 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual global health crisis that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; if you can believe it, we’re already half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though clearly impacted by the ongoing virus, was not wiped out, and our technology certainly hasn't been disabled. But this most pessimistic of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a substantial bummer in store, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines each, will unavoidably lead to violent conflict, no matter the efforts of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, although those instincts are not held by the most. Right now, it seems difficult to dispute that, despite the fact that we probably should.

Metropolis

By far the most prominent depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing celebrating its centennial. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen lord over the skyscrapers as laborers toil below the surface on the equipment that power the city. Affluent city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these enormous social gaps when he falls for Maria, an subterranean activist who preaches a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans builds a robot in her likeness, aiming to tear the whole of Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a machine designed to imitate a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who desires to see them destroyed; it's a component flipped by the modern world in a future that in other ways seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology relies on traditional manual labor, which appears as a most logical union of conservative contempt for “unskilled workers” and corporate enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It has not yet materialized, but it's easy to picture a slightly less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a resurgence to industrial production. The more complex, less plausible accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the have-nots is bridged with compassion; not so much with specific policies. 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