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The date 2025 might sound more futuristic. Maybe it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 represents a leap forward, and it's where we find ourselves, with every science-fiction-style advancement – primarily the broad integration of artificial intelligence – appearing dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored anti-human technology might operate a bit better?) Didn't anyone warn us regarding this?

The response, particularly concerning our sci-fi movies from years ago (or sometimes months ago) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but specifically implausible (if humanity is inevitably decimated, we will most likely bring down the ape population alongside us). Others of them are visionary; the rest just look like bad green screen. But it's worth examining where different directors, ranging from masters to journeymen, thought we'd be situated by now in the world's development. Therefore, we shall examine a selection of the films that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they have anything to teach us.

Doom

Well, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth can establish a research facility. Now, the bad stuff – in terms of narrative and in terms of over-the-top cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really go down for another 20 years later, so should we do discover a Martian gateway this year, we could gain some time to avert catastrophe. Were we to discover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether Elon Musk would still be extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the portal was not a thing he funded himself, allowing him to claim messianic ownership for humanity's expansion into the stars. That's before we consider the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent mutations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for why, exactly we allow Mars serve as a stretch-goal aspiration for mankind. Be it in the director's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely act as a symbol of hope. Should someone wishes to make that questionable Martian real estate sale, maybe they ought to begin with first making the fantasy version appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the goofiest quirks of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the multiple world-threatening cataclysms, including a half-decade leap whose occurrences are largely undepicted in the films themselves; the films have turned into a clock radio constantly set a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of Marvel stuff that fan sites clarify 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 pretty detached from any concrete sense of time. However the poorer material is some of the worst the studio has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on this stuff, we're in for a great deal of frustrating stagnation in 2026, along with the related spin that actually, this nonsensical crap unfolding before our eyes is essential to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that assertion will likely turn out to be correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, starting its timeline around 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that devastates most of Earth’s people has run its course, and also boosted the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s only 2026, with additional human indignities (and simian triumphs) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this contagion spreads globally 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 more abstract; astonishingly, we’re now half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though clearly wounded by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been wiped out, and our technology definitely hasn't been knocked out. But this bleakest of the four modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a significant downer in store, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines each, will unavoidably result in violent conflict, no matter the efforts of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, even if those drives are not held by the majority. Currently, it seems difficult to dispute that, even though we probably should.

The Silent Classic

Easily the most prominent depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing celebrating its 100th anniversary. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists lord over the towers as workers work tirelessly below the surface on the equipment that keep everything running. Affluent surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground activist who preaches a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans creates a automaton in her image, hoping to tear the entire Metropolis down in flames. Here, a machine created to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument 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 progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology depends on old-fashioned human toil, which seems like a perfect fusion of rightwing disdain for “unskilled workers” and corporate enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's easy to picture a slightly less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a return to manufacturing. The more complex, less plausible accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the have-nots is spanned with love; rather than with concrete reforms. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the possibility