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The date 2025 could appear more futuristic. Maybe it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies a leap forward, a moment where we currently stand, with each futuristic development – chiefly the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – seeming dystopian, or possibly even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed anti-human technology would actually function a bit better?) Didn't anyone warn us regarding this?

The response, particularly concerning science fiction films made long ago (or sometimes recently) set in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (when mankind is ultimately decimated, we will most likely take the primate species alongside us). Some of them are prescient; others just resemble bad green screen. But it's worth examining where various directors, ranging from masters to journeymen, believed we'd be situated by now in the world's development. So let's take a look at some of the movies that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they contain any lessons to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this isn't promising. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Now, the bad stuff – regarding narrative and in terms of over-the-top cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – doesn't really transpire for another 20 years later, so even if we do discover a Martian gateway now, we could gain some time to avert catastrophe. Were we to discover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would still be super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the discovery was not a thing he funded himself, allowing him to assert savior-like credit for mankind's journey to the cosmos. That's before we consider the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and resulting transformations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is nearer 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 long-term hope for humanity. Whether in the director's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to serve as a symbol of hope. If anyone wants to make that dubious red-planet property deal, maybe they should start with at least ensuring the fictional depiction look good.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the goofiest quirks of the current MCU is how to account for the multiple world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are mostly undepicted in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a alarm clock perpetually set a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of MCU content that fan sites 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 distant from Earth, and so seem pretty unmoored from our sense of time. However the bad stuff is some of the worst Marvel has ever produced: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by this stuff, we're facing a whole lot of annoying stagnation in 2026, along with the accompanying narrative that in truth, this nonsensical crap unfolding in front of us is crucial to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will likely prove correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, initiating its chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out the majority of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of apes, it’s merely 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this virus spreads globally and taking place in 2019, looks downright eerie in the wake of the real-world global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re now half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though obviously impacted by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been wiped out, and our technology definitely hasn't been disabled. Yet this bleakest of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a significant bummer in store, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines either, will inevitably result in warfare, no matter the work of the best-intentioned among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, although those instincts don't represent the most. Right now, it seems hard to argue with that, even though we probably should.

The Silent Classic

By far the best-known depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to marking its centennial. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists lord over the towers as laborers toil underground on the machines that power the city. Affluent city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these enormous class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground organizer who preaches a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans builds a robot in her likeness, aiming to bring the whole of Metropolis down in flames. Here, a machine designed to imitate a human isn't a tool of the elite, but an entity who desires to see them destroyed; it's a component flipped by reality in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery relies on old-fashioned human toil, which appears as 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 imagine a somewhat less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The trickier, less plausible accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is bridged with love; not so much with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the chance