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The year 2025 might sound more futuristic. Maybe it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 represents a leap forward, and it's where we currently stand, with each futuristic development – primarily the broad integration of AI – seeming bleak, or possibly even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed anti-human technology might function more effectively?) Did no one warn us about this?

The response, particularly regarding science fiction films from years ago (or sometimes months ago) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of these prophecies are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but specifically implausible (if humanity is ultimately decimated, we will almost certainly bring down the primate species alongside us). Some of them are visionary; the rest just resemble bad green screen. Yet it remains worth examining where various directors, from geniuses to grunts, thought we'd be positioned by now in our planet's evolution. So let's examine at some of the movies that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they contain any lessons to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to set up a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – in terms of narrative and in terms of over-the-top cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – doesn't really transpire for another 20 years in the future, so should we find a portal to Mars this year, we could gain a respite to avoid catastrophe. If we did discover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would still be extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the portal wasn't something he personally paid for, 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 horrific creatures. (Again, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for why, exactly we allow Mars become a stretch-goal hope for humanity. Be it in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely act as a symbol of hope. If anyone wishes to make that dubious Martian property deal, maybe they should start with at least making the fictional depiction look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the goofiest quirks of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the various global cataclysms, including a half-decade leap whose occurrences are largely not shown in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a clock radio constantly running a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. So there's a large assortment of Marvel stuff that various wikis clarify to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so seem quite detached from our sense of time. However the poorer material is some of the worst the studio has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless 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 whole lot of annoying stagnation in 2026, along with the accompanying spin that actually, this nonsensical crap unfolding in front of us is crucial to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the real world that claim will likely prove correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, initiating its chronology around 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s human population has run its course, and also enhanced the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s merely 2026, with additional human indignities (and victories for apes) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this virus propagates around the world and set in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the real-world global health crisis that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; astonishingly, we’re now half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though obviously wounded by the ongoing virus, was not annihilated, and technological infrastructure certainly has not been knocked out. But this most pessimistic of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a substantial bummer in store, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines each, will unavoidably result in violent conflict, regardless of the work of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, although those drives don't represent the majority. Right now, it feels difficult to argue with that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

Metropolis

Easily the best-known portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to marking its centennial. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen preside over the skyscrapers as laborers toil underground on the machines that keep everything running. Rich surface resident Freder, son of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these massive class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean activist who preaches a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans creates a robot in her likeness, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a robot created to imitate a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who desires to witness their downfall; it's a component inverted by reality in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery depends on traditional human toil, which seems like a perfect union of rightwing disdain for “the working class” and corporate zeal for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's easy to picture a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The more complex, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the gap between the haves and the poor is bridged with love; rather than with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the possibility