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The date 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies a leap forward, and it's where we currently stand, with each science-fiction-style development – chiefly the broad integration of AI – seeming bleak, or perhaps more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored anti-human technology might operate a bit better?) Did no one sound the alarm about this?

The response, at least regarding science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally months ago) set in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of these prophecies are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but specifically far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably decimated, we will almost certainly bring down the ape population alongside us). Others of them are visionary; others just resemble bad visual effects. But it's valuable to explore where various directors, ranging from masters to grunts, believed we'd be positioned by this time in the world's evolution. So let's take a look at some of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they contain any lessons to teach us.

Doom

Now, this isn't promising. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated 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 establish a scientific outpost. Currently, the negative events – in terms of narrative and concerning garish film versions of a FPS video game – doesn't really transpire for another 20 years later, so should we find a Martian gateway this year, we might have some time to avert true disaster. 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 dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the portal wasn't something he personally paid for, enabling him to claim savior-like credit for mankind's expansion into the stars. This precedes we consider the collection of Martian chromosomes and subsequent transformations into horrific creatures. (Again, 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 hope for humanity. Whether in John Carpenter's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to serve as a beacon of optimism. Should someone wishes to close that dubious red-planet property deal, maybe they ought to begin with first ensuring the fictional depiction look good.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the goofiest quirks of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the multiple world-threatening cataclysms, including a half-decade leap whose occurrences are largely undepicted in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a clock radio constantly running a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a large assortment of MCU content that various wikis clarify to be set in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated adventure *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so seem pretty unmoored from any concrete sense of time. However the bad stuff is among the weakest the studio has created: the nonsensically meandering 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 annoying stagnation in 2026, along with the related spin that actually, this nonsensical crap unfolding before our eyes is essential to future events. More troublingly, in the actual world that assertion will likely turn out to be accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, initiating its chronology around 2016. So by the time a pathogen that knocks out most of Earth’s people has run its course, and also boosted the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s merely 2026, with further human indignities (and simian triumphs) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this virus spreads around the world and taking place in 2019, looks downright eerie in the wake of the real-world pandemic that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; astonishingly, we’re already six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though obviously wounded by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been wiped out, and our technology definitely has not been disabled. Yet this most pessimistic of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a significant downer to offer, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably result in warfare, regardless of the efforts of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, although those drives don't represent the most. Right now, it seems difficult to dispute that, despite the fact that we probably should.

Metropolis

Easily the most prominent depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to marking its centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists lord over the skyscrapers as workers toil underground on the equipment that keep everything running. Affluent city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these massive social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground activist who advocates for a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans creates a automaton in her likeness, hoping to tear the entire Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a robot created to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but someone who desires to see them destroyed; it's a component inverted by the modern world in a future that otherwise seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology relies on traditional human toil, which seems like a perfect union of rightwing contempt for “the working class” and corporate enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It has not yet materialized, but it's simple to imagine a somewhat less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a return to industrial production. The trickier, less plausible accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is spanned with love; not so much with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the chance