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The date 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies a leap forward, and it's where we currently stand, with each futuristic advancement – chiefly the broad integration of AI – appearing dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored anti-human technology might operate a bit better?) Did no one warn us regarding this?

The answer, particularly concerning our sci-fi movies from years ago (or sometimes months ago) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of these prophecies are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but in detail far-fetched (when mankind is inevitably ravaged, we will most likely bring down the ape population with us). Others of them are visionary; others just resemble poor green screen. Yet it remains valuable to explore where different film-makers, ranging from masters to journeymen, believed we'd be situated by now in our planet's development. So let's examine at some of the movies that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they contain any lessons to teach us.

Doom

Now, this doesn't bode well. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to set up a scientific outpost. Currently, the bad stuff – in terms of plot and in terms of over-the-top film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually go down for another 20 years later, so should we do discover a portal to Mars now, we could gain a respite to avoid true disaster. If we did discover a portal to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would still be extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the discovery wasn't something he personally paid for, enabling him to claim messianic credit for mankind's journey into the stars. That's before we even get to the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and subsequent mutations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for why, exactly we allow Mars become a stretch-goal hope for humanity. Whether in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to serve as a beacon of hope. Should someone wishes to make that dubious red-planet real estate sale, maybe they ought to begin with at least making the fictional depiction appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the goofiest quirks of the present MCU is how to account for the multiple global disasters, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are largely not shown in the movies themselves; the films have become like a alarm clock constantly set a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of MCU content that various wikis helpfully explain 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 unmoored from any concrete sense of time. But the poorer material is among the weakest Marvel has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're in for a great deal of annoying stagnation in 2026, along with the related spin that in truth, this nonsensical crap unfolding in front of us is crucial to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the real world that claim will probably turn out to be accurate.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the more distant future of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, starting its chronology approximately 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that devastates most of Earth’s human population has run its course, and also enhanced the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s merely 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this virus propagates around the world and set in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual global health crisis that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; if you can believe it, 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 annihilated, and our technology certainly has not been disabled. Yet this bleakest of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a significant downer in store, implying that human and/or ape nature, however one defines either, will unavoidably result in violent conflict, no matter the work of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, although those instincts don't represent the most. Currently, it seems hard to dispute that, even though we probably should.

The Silent Classic

Easily the most prominent 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 futuristic city where rich businessmen preside over the skyscrapers as laborers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that power the city. Rich city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these massive social gaps when he falls for Maria, an subterranean activist who preaches a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans builds a robot in her image, aiming to bring the entire Metropolis down in flames. Here, a machine created to mimic 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 flipped by reality in a future that otherwise seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology depends on old-fashioned human toil, which seems like a perfect union of rightwing disdain for “the working class” and corporate zeal for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's easy to picture a slightly more utilitarian version of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a resurgence to manufacturing. The trickier, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is spanned with love; rather than with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the possibility