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The year 2025 might sound more futuristic. Maybe it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with every futuristic advancement – chiefly the broad integration of artificial intelligence – appearing dystopian, or perhaps more grim. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored anti-human technology would actually operate a bit better?) Didn't anyone warn us about this?

The answer, particularly concerning science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally recently) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail implausible (when mankind is inevitably decimated, we will most likely take the primate species alongside us). Others of them are prescient; the rest just look like bad visual effects. Yet it remains valuable to explore where different directors, ranging from masters to grunts, believed we'd be situated by now in the world's development. Therefore, we shall examine at some of the films that have been set in 2026 over the years and see if they contain any lessons to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can set up a scientific outpost. Now, the bad stuff – in terms of narrative and in terms of garish film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually transpire for two more decades later, so even if we find a Martian gateway now, we might have some time to avert true disaster. If we did uncover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would remain extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the discovery wasn't something he funded himself, allowing him to claim savior-like credit for mankind's journey to the cosmos. This precedes we consider the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and resulting transformations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for why, exactly we allow Mars become a long-term aspiration for humanity. Be it in the director's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded 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. If anyone wants to close that dubious red-planet property deal, maybe they should start with first making the fictional depiction look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the goofiest quirks of the current MCU is the way it handles the various global disasters, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose events are largely not shown in the movies themselves; the films have become like a alarm clock perpetually running a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. So there's a large assortment of Marvel stuff that fan sites clarify to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so feel pretty detached from any concrete sense of time. However the poorer material is some of the worst Marvel has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're facing a whole lot of annoying stagnation in 2026, along with the accompanying narrative that in truth, this nonsensical crap happening before our eyes is crucial to future events. More troublingly, in the real world that claim will likely turn out to be correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located 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 timeline approximately 2016. So by the time a pathogen that knocks out the majority of Earth’s people has done its damage, and also enhanced the intelligence of primates, it’s merely 2026, with additional human indignities (and victories for apes) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this contagion spreads around the world and set around 2019, looks downright eerie in the aftermath of the actual pandemic that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re now six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though clearly impacted by the still-spreading virus, was not annihilated, and our technology certainly hasn't been disabled. But this most pessimistic of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a significant downer to offer, implying that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as either, will unavoidably lead to warfare, regardless of the work of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, even if those drives don't represent the majority. Right now, it feels difficult to dispute that, despite the fact that we probably should.

The Silent Classic

By far the most prominent depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing celebrating its 100th anniversary. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists lord over the towers as laborers toil below the surface on the machines that keep everything running. Rich city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground organizer who preaches a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans builds a robot in her likeness, aiming to bring the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a robot created to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but someone who wants to see them destroyed; it's a component flipped by reality in a future that in other ways seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery relies on traditional manual labor, which appears as a most logical fusion of rightwing contempt for “unskilled workers” and corporate enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It has not yet materialized, but it's easy to picture a slightly more utilitarian version of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a resurgence to manufacturing. The more complex, harder-to-imagine feat is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the poor is bridged with love; not so much with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the chance