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The date 2025 might sound more futuristic. Perhaps it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 represents one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with every futuristic development – chiefly the broad integration of AI – appearing dystopian, or perhaps more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored anti-human technology would actually function more effectively?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm regarding this?

The answer, particularly concerning science fiction films made long ago (or occasionally months ago) set in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of those warnings are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but specifically implausible (when mankind is ultimately ravaged, we will almost certainly bring down the primate species alongside us). Others of them are visionary; the rest just look like bad visual effects. But it's valuable to explore where different directors, from geniuses to grunts, believed we'd be situated by this time in our planet's evolution. So let's take a look a selection of the films that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they contain any lessons to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this doesn't bode well. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can establish a research facility. Now, the bad stuff – in terms of plot and concerning over-the-top film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually transpire for another 20 years later, so should we do discover a Martian gateway this year, we might have a respite to avoid catastrophe. If we did discover a portal to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would still be extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the portal was not a thing he personally paid for, allowing him to assert savior-like ownership for mankind's expansion into the stars. This precedes we consider the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and subsequent mutations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for the reasons we let Mars become a stretch-goal aspiration for mankind. Be it in John Carpenter's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction 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 hope. If anyone wants to make that dubious Martian real estate sale, maybe they ought to begin with first ensuring the fictional depiction look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the goofiest quirks of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the multiple world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a half-decade leap whose events are mostly undepicted in the films themselves; the films have become like a alarm clock perpetually running a few seconds fast – except with 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*, occur distant from Earth, and so seem pretty detached from our sense of time. But the bad stuff is some of the worst Marvel has created: the convoluted and aimless 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 wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the related spin that actually, this nonsensical crap happening before our eyes is crucial to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the real world that claim will likely prove accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the original five-movie *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* begins closer to home, initiating its timeline approximately 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that knocks out most of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and simultaneously enhanced the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s only 2026, with further human indignities (and victories for apes) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this virus spreads globally and set in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the wake of the actual pandemic that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re already half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously impacted by the still-spreading virus, was not annihilated, and technological infrastructure definitely hasn't been disabled. But this most pessimistic of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a substantial bummer in store, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines either, will unavoidably result in violent conflict, no matter the efforts of the most well-meaning among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, even if those instincts don't represent the most. Currently, it feels hard to argue with that, even though we probably should.

Metropolis

By far the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie close to celebrating its centennial. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen lord over the skyscrapers as laborers work tirelessly underground on the equipment that power the city. Rich 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 activist who preaches a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans creates a robot in her likeness, aiming to bring the entire Metropolis to ruin. Here, a robot created to imitate a human isn't a tool of the elite, but someone who wants to witness their downfall; it's a component flipped by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery relies on traditional human toil, which seems like a perfect fusion of rightwing disdain for “the working class” and corporate enthusiasm for an tech boom. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's simple to imagine a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a return to manufacturing. The trickier, harder-to-imagine feat is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the haves and the poor is spanned with compassion; rather than with concrete reforms. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the possibility