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The date 2025 might sound more futuristic. Maybe it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies one step beyond, a moment where we currently stand, with each futuristic advancement – primarily the broad integration of artificial intelligence – seeming dystopian, or possibly more grim. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology would actually function more effectively?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm about this?

The response, particularly regarding our sci-fi movies from years ago (or sometimes months ago) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of these prophecies are broadly applicable (global catastrophe) but specifically far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably decimated, we will most likely take the ape population with us). Others of them are visionary; the rest just look like poor green screen. But it's valuable to explore where different film-makers, 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 over the years and determine if they contain any lessons to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to set up a research facility. Currently, the negative events – in terms of narrative and concerning garish film versions of a FPS video game – does not actually go down for two more decades in the future, so even if we find a portal to Mars this year, we might have a respite to avoid catastrophe. Were we to discover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether Elon Musk would remain super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the portal wasn't something he funded himself, allowing him to assert savior-like ownership for mankind's journey to the cosmos. That's before we even get to the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting mutations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for why, exactly we let Mars become a stretch-goal aspiration for mankind. Whether in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to act as a beacon of optimism. Should someone wishes to make that dubious Martian real estate sale, maybe they should start with at least making the fictional depiction appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the goofiest quirks of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the multiple global disasters, 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 minutes fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. So there's 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 underrated adventure *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so feel quite unmoored from our sense of time. However 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 this stuff, we're in for a great deal of frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the accompanying narrative that actually, this nonsensical crap unfolding in front of us is crucial to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the real world that claim will probably prove accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is located in the more distant future of Earth, but the new trilogy that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, initiating its chronology around 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out the majority of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of primates, it’s merely 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this virus propagates around the world and taking place in 2019, looks downright eerie in the wake of the real-world global health crisis that would begin in 2020. In contrast, 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 impacted by the ongoing virus, was not annihilated, and our technology certainly has not been disabled. Yet this bleakest of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a significant downer in store, implying that human and/or ape nature, however one defines either, will unavoidably result in warfare, regardless of the work of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, even if those drives don't represent the most. Right now, it seems hard to dispute that, even though we probably should.

Metropolis

By far the most prominent depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists lord over the towers as laborers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that keep everything running. Rich city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these massive class divisions when he falls for Maria, an subterranean organizer who preaches a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans creates a robot in her image, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a robot designed to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but someone who desires to witness their downfall; it's a component flipped by the modern world in a future that in other ways appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery relies on old-fashioned human toil, which seems like a most logical union of rightwing disdain for “the working class” and business zeal for an AI bubble. It has not yet come to pass, but it's simple to imagine a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a return to industrial production. The more complex, harder-to-imagine feat is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the poor 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 chance