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The date 2025 could appear more futuristic. Perhaps it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies a leap forward, and it's where we find ourselves, with every futuristic advancement – primarily the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – seeming dystopian, or possibly more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed dehumanizing technology might function a bit better?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm about this?

The response, particularly concerning our sci-fi movies from years ago (or sometimes months ago) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of these prophecies are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but specifically implausible (when mankind is ultimately ravaged, we will most likely bring down the primate species alongside us). Some of them are prescient; the rest just resemble bad visual effects. Yet it remains worth examining where different film-makers, from geniuses to grunts, believed we'd be positioned by this time in our planet's development. So let's take a look at some of the films that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they contain any lessons to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this isn't promising. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can set up a research facility. Currently, the bad stuff – regarding 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 now, we might have some time to avoid catastrophe. Were we to discover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether Elon Musk would remain extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the portal wasn't something he funded himself, enabling him to claim savior-like ownership for mankind's expansion into the stars. This precedes we even get to the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting mutations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a good test case for the reasons we let Mars serve as a long-term aspiration for humanity. Be it in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to serve as a symbol of hope. If anyone wishes to make that questionable red-planet property deal, maybe they ought to begin with at least ensuring the fictional depiction appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the strangest features of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the multiple global cataclysms, including a half-decade leap whose events are mostly undepicted in the movies themselves; the movies have turned into a alarm clock perpetually running a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. 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 adventure *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so feel pretty detached from any concrete sense of time. However the poorer material is among the weakest Marvel has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on this stuff, we're facing a whole lot of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the accompanying narrative that in truth, this nonsensical crap unfolding before our eyes is essential to future events. Even worse, in the real 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 set in the further-flung future of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, initiating its chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out the majority of Earth’s people has run its course, and also enhanced the intelligence of primates, it’s only 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this virus spreads globally and taking place around 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the wake of the real-world global health crisis that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; if you can believe it, we’re now six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly wounded by the ongoing virus, hasn't been wiped out, and our technology definitely has not been disabled. But this bleakest of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a substantial downer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines either, will inevitably lead to warfare, regardless of the efforts of the best-intentioned among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, even if those instincts don't represent the majority. Currently, it seems difficult to argue with that, even though we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

Easily the most prominent depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to marking its 100th anniversary. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where wealthy industrialists preside over the towers as laborers toil underground on the machines that keep everything running. Affluent city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these massive class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean organizer who advocates for a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans creates a automaton in her likeness, hoping to bring the whole of Metropolis to ruin. Here, a robot designed to imitate a human isn't a tool of the elite, but an entity who wants to witness their downfall; it's a component flipped by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology relies on old-fashioned human toil, which seems like a perfect fusion of conservative contempt for “unskilled workers” and business enthusiasm for an tech boom. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's easy to picture a somewhat less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a return to manufacturing. The trickier, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the poor is bridged with compassion; not so much with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the possibility