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The date 2025 could appear more futuristic. Perhaps it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 represents one step beyond, a moment where we find ourselves, with every futuristic development – chiefly the broad integration of AI – appearing bleak, or perhaps more grim. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored anti-human technology would actually operate more effectively?) Didn't anyone warn us about this?

The answer, at least concerning science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally months ago) 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 inevitably decimated, we will most likely bring down the primate species alongside us). Some of them are visionary; others just resemble bad green screen. Yet it remains worth examining where different directors, from geniuses to grunts, thought we'd be situated by now in the world'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 have anything to teach us.

Doom

Now, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – regarding plot and concerning garish cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – does not actually go down for another 20 years in the future, so even if we do discover a Martian gateway this year, we could gain some time to avert catastrophe. Were we to discover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether Elon Musk would remain super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the portal wasn't something he funded himself, enabling him to claim savior-like ownership for mankind's journey to the cosmos. That's before we consider the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting transformations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, not to be confused with the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for the reasons we let Mars become a long-term hope for mankind. Whether in the director's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely act as a symbol of hope. Should someone wants to make that dubious Martian property deal, maybe they should start with first ensuring the fantasy version appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the goofiest quirks of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the various global cataclysms, encompassing a half-decade leap whose occurrences are mostly not shown in the films themselves; the films have become like a alarm clock constantly running a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of MCU content that various wikis helpfully explain to be set in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so feel pretty unmoored from our sense of time. But the poorer material is among the weakest Marvel has ever produced: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on this stuff, we're in for a great deal of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, including the accompanying spin that actually, this confusing mess happening before our eyes is crucial to future events. More troublingly, in the actual world that assertion will probably turn out to be accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, starting its timeline around 2016. Thus, when a virus that devastates most of Earth’s people has done its damage, and simultaneously boosted the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s only 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this contagion spreads around the world and set in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the real-world pandemic that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; astonishingly, we’re now six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though obviously wounded by the still-spreading virus, was not wiped out, and technological infrastructure certainly hasn't been disabled. Yet this bleakest of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a significant bummer in store, implying that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably result in violent conflict, regardless of the work of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, even if those instincts are not held by the most. Right now, it seems difficult to dispute that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

Metropolis

By far the most prominent 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 rich businessmen lord over the skyscrapers as laborers toil below the surface on the machines that keep everything running. Affluent surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these enormous class divisions when he falls for Maria, an subterranean organizer who advocates for a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans builds a robot in her image, aiming to bring the entire Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a machine created to imitate a human isn't a tool of the elite, but someone who wants to witness their downfall; it's one element inverted by reality in a future that otherwise appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery depends on old-fashioned human toil, which appears as a most logical fusion of conservative contempt for “the working class” and corporate enthusiasm for an tech boom. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's easy to picture a somewhat more utilitarian version of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a return to manufacturing. The trickier, less plausible accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the poor is bridged with love; not so much with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the chance