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The year 2025 could appear more futuristic. Perhaps it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies one step beyond, a moment where we currently stand, with each futuristic advancement – primarily the widespread adoption of AI – seeming bleak, or possibly even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology would actually operate more effectively?) Did no one warn us about this?

The answer, particularly regarding science fiction films from years ago (or sometimes recently) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of those warnings are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but in detail implausible (when mankind is ultimately ravaged, we will almost certainly take the primate species alongside us). Some of them are visionary; others just resemble bad visual effects. But it's worth examining where various directors, from geniuses to grunts, thought we'd be situated by now in our planet's evolution. Therefore, we shall take a look at some of the movies that have been set in 2026 over the years and determine if they contain any lessons to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this isn't promising. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to set up a scientific outpost. Now, the bad stuff – in terms of plot and concerning over-the-top cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really go down for another 20 years in the future, so should we do discover a portal to Mars this year, we might have some time to avert true disaster. Were we to uncover a portal to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether Elon Musk would remain super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the discovery wasn't something he funded himself, enabling him to assert messianic credit for mankind's expansion into the stars. This precedes we even get to the collection of Martian chromosomes and resulting transformations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for why, exactly we allow Mars become a stretch-goal hope for mankind. Be it in John Carpenter's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to act as a beacon of hope. Should someone wants to make that questionable red-planet property deal, maybe they should start with at least making the fantasy version look good.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the goofiest quirks of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the various global disasters, encompassing a half-decade leap whose occurrences are mostly not shown in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a clock radio perpetually running a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of MCU content that fan sites helpfully explain 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 detached from our sense of time. However the poorer material is some of the worst Marvel has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by this stuff, we're facing a great deal of frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the accompanying narrative that in truth, this nonsensical crap happening in front of us is essential to future events. More troublingly, in the real world that claim will likely turn out to be accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the further-flung future of Earth, but the new trilogy that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, starting its timeline approximately 2016. Thus, when a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of primates, it’s only 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this contagion propagates around the world and taking place in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the wake of the actual pandemic that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; astonishingly, we’re already half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though clearly wounded by the ongoing virus, was not annihilated, and our technology definitely has not been knocked out. Yet this bleakest of the four modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a substantial downer to offer, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines each, will inevitably lead to violent conflict, regardless of the work of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, even if those drives don't represent the majority. Right now, it feels hard to dispute that, even though we probably should.

Metropolis

Easily the best-known depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to marking its 100th anniversary. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where wealthy industrialists preside over the towers as laborers toil below the surface on the machines that power the city. Rich surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean activist who advocates for a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans creates a robot in her likeness, hoping to bring the whole of Metropolis down in flames. Here, a robot created to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who wants to witness their downfall; it's one element flipped by the modern world in a future that otherwise seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery relies on old-fashioned manual labor, which appears as a perfect fusion of conservative disdain for “unskilled workers” and corporate zeal for an tech boom. It has not yet come to pass, but it's easy to picture a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a return to manufacturing. The trickier, less plausible feat is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is spanned with love; rather than with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the chance