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The year 2025 might sound more futuristic. Maybe it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies one step beyond, a moment where we find ourselves, with each science-fiction-style advancement – primarily the broad integration of artificial intelligence – appearing bleak, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed anti-human technology would actually function a bit better?) Didn't anyone warn us about this?

The answer, at least concerning science fiction films made long ago (or sometimes months ago) set in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of these prophecies are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is ultimately decimated, we will most likely take the ape population alongside us). Some of them are visionary; others just resemble poor visual effects. Yet it remains worth examining where different film-makers, ranging from masters to grunts, thought we'd be situated by this time in our planet's development. Therefore, we shall 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 teach us.

Doom

Well, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Currently, the bad stuff – regarding narrative and concerning over-the-top film versions of a FPS video game – doesn't really transpire for two more decades in the future, so even if we find a portal to Mars now, we could gain a respite to avert true disaster. If we did discover a portal to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether Elon Musk would still be extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the portal wasn't something he funded himself, allowing him to assert messianic credit for humanity's expansion into the stars. That's before we consider the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and subsequent transformations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a good test case for why, exactly we let Mars become a long-term aspiration for humanity. Whether in the director's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to act as a symbol of hope. If anyone wishes to close that dubious Martian real estate sale, maybe they ought to begin with first ensuring the fictional depiction appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the strangest features of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the multiple global cataclysms, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose events are mostly undepicted in the movies themselves; the movies have turned into a clock radio perpetually set a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a whole bunch of MCU content that fan sites clarify to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so feel pretty unmoored from our sense of time. However the bad stuff is among the weakest Marvel has created: 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 great deal of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, including the related spin that actually, this confusing mess unfolding in front of us is crucial to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the real world that assertion will probably prove accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is located in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, starting its timeline around 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that devastates most of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of apes, it’s only 2026, with further human indignities (and victories for apes) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this contagion propagates globally and set in 2019, looks downright eerie in the wake of the real-world global health crisis that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; astonishingly, we’re now six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly wounded by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been annihilated, and our technology definitely has not been knocked out. But this bleakest of the four modern *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a substantial bummer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will unavoidably lead to violent conflict, no matter the efforts of the most well-meaning among us. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, although those drives don't represent the majority. Right now, it seems hard to argue with that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

Metropolis

By far the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing celebrating its 100th anniversary. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where wealthy industrialists lord over the towers as workers toil below the surface on the machines that keep everything running. Rich city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these enormous class divisions when he falls for Maria, an underground activist who advocates for a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans builds a robot in her likeness, hoping to bring the entire Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a machine designed to mimic a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who wants to see them destroyed; it's a component flipped by the modern world in a future that in other ways seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology relies on traditional manual labor, which appears as a perfect union of rightwing contempt for “unskilled workers” and business enthusiasm for an tech boom. It has not yet come to pass, but it's easy to imagine a slightly more utilitarian version of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a resurgence to industrial production. The more complex, harder-to-imagine feat is the ending of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the poor is bridged with love; not so much with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the chance