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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 one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with each futuristic development – chiefly the widespread adoption of AI – seeming bleak, or perhaps even worse. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed dehumanizing technology might operate more effectively?) Didn't anyone warn us about this?

The response, at least concerning science fiction films made long ago (or sometimes months ago) set in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of those warnings are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but specifically far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably decimated, we will most likely take the primate species alongside us). Others of them are prescient; others just resemble poor visual effects. But it's valuable to explore where various film-makers, ranging from masters to grunts, believed we'd be positioned by this time in our planet's evolution. So let's take a look a selection of the movies that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they contain any lessons to teach us.

Doom

Now, this doesn't bode well. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth can set up a research facility. Currently, the negative events – regarding plot and in terms of over-the-top cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – doesn't really go down for two more decades later, so should we find a portal to Mars now, 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 determine whether a certain tech billionaire would still be super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the discovery was not a thing he personally paid for, enabling him to claim messianic credit for humanity's expansion to the cosmos. That's before we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent mutations into monstrous beings. (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 allow Mars serve as a stretch-goal aspiration for mankind. Whether in John Carpenter'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 symbol of hope. Should someone wishes to make that dubious red-planet property deal, perhaps they ought to begin with first ensuring the fantasy version appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the goofiest quirks of the present MCU is the way it handles the various world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a half-decade leap whose events are mostly not shown in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a clock radio perpetually running a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of Marvel stuff that fan sites helpfully explain to be set in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so seem pretty unmoored from our sense of time. But the poorer material is some of the worst the studio has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're in for a whole lot of annoying stagnation in 2026, along with the accompanying spin that actually, this nonsensical crap unfolding before our eyes is essential to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will probably turn out to be correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series is located in the more distant future of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, starting its chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a pathogen that devastates the majority of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously boosted the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s only 2026, with further human indignities (and victories for apes) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this virus propagates globally and taking place in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the wake of the actual pandemic that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; if you can believe it, we’re already six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously impacted by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been wiped out, and our technology certainly hasn't been disabled. But this bleakest of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a substantial downer to offer, implying that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably lead to warfare, regardless of the efforts of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, even if those drives are not held by the majority. Currently, it feels difficult to dispute that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

Metropolis

By far the best-known portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing celebrating its centennial. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where rich businessmen preside over the towers as workers work tirelessly underground on the equipment that power the city. Affluent surface resident Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean activist who advocates for a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans creates a automaton in her likeness, hoping to tear the entire Metropolis to ruin. Here, a robot created to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but someone who wants to witness their downfall; it's a component flipped by reality in a future that in other ways seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery relies on old-fashioned human toil, which seems like a most logical union of rightwing contempt for “the working class” and business zeal for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's easy to imagine a somewhat more utilitarian version of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a return to manufacturing. The more complex, less plausible accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is bridged with love; rather than with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the possibility