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The date 2025 might sound more futuristic. Maybe it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 represents a leap forward, and it's where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style development – primarily the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – seeming dystopian, or possibly even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed dehumanizing technology would actually function a bit better?) Did no one warn us about this?

The response, particularly concerning our sci-fi movies made long ago (or sometimes recently) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of these prophecies are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but specifically far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably ravaged, we will almost certainly take the ape population with us). Some of them are visionary; others just resemble bad green screen. But it's valuable to explore where various directors, from geniuses to grunts, thought we'd be positioned by now in the world's evolution. Therefore, we shall examine at some of the films that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they contain any lessons to teach us.

Doom

Well, this doesn't bode well. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to set up a scientific outpost. Now, the bad stuff – regarding narrative and in terms of garish cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really transpire for another 20 years later, so should we do discover a portal to Mars now, we could gain a respite to avert true disaster. Were we to uncover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether Elon Musk would still be super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the discovery wasn't something he funded himself, allowing him to claim messianic credit for humanity's journey to the cosmos. This precedes we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting transformations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is closer to 2046, not to be confused with the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for why, exactly we let Mars serve as a stretch-goal hope for mankind. Whether in John Carpenter's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to act as a symbol of optimism. Should someone wishes to close that dubious Martian real estate sale, maybe they ought to begin with at least making the fictional depiction look good.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the goofiest quirks of the current MCU is the way it handles the multiple global cataclysms, encompassing a half-decade leap whose events are mostly not shown in the movies themselves; the films have turned into a clock radio constantly set a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of MCU content that various wikis clarify to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so feel quite unmoored from our sense of time. But the bad stuff is among the weakest Marvel has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're in for a great deal of frustrating stagnation in 2026, along with the accompanying spin that actually, this confusing mess unfolding in front of us is essential to future events. Even worse, in the real world that claim will likely turn out to be accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the further-flung future of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, initiating its chronology around 2016. So by the time a pathogen that devastates the majority of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously boosted the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s merely 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this contagion propagates globally and set 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 more abstract; astonishingly, we’re already half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly wounded by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been wiped out, and technological infrastructure definitely has not been knocked out. Yet this most pessimistic of the four modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a substantial bummer in store, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably result in warfare, regardless of the work of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, although those drives are not held by the majority. Currently, it seems hard to argue with that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

Metropolis

Easily the best-known depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing marking its centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists lord over the towers as workers toil underground on the machines that keep everything running. Affluent city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these enormous social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground activist who preaches a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans builds a robot in her likeness, hoping to tear the entire Metropolis down in flames. Here, a machine designed to mimic a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who desires to see them destroyed; 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 advanced machinery relies on old-fashioned human toil, which seems like a most logical union of conservative disdain for “the working class” and corporate zeal for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's simple to imagine a slightly less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a return to manufacturing. The trickier, less plausible feat is the ending of the film, where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is spanned with compassion; rather than with concrete reforms. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the chance