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The year 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 represents a leap forward, and it's where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style development – primarily the widespread adoption of AI – seeming bleak, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed anti-human technology would actually operate more effectively?) Didn't anyone warn us regarding this?

The response, particularly concerning science fiction films made long ago (or occasionally months ago) set in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of those warnings are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (when mankind is ultimately decimated, we will almost certainly bring down the primate species alongside us). Some of them are visionary; others just look like bad green screen. But it's valuable to explore where various directors, from geniuses to journeymen, believed we'd be positioned by now in our planet's development. So let's examine at some of the movies that have been set in 2026 over the years and determine if they contain any lessons to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this doesn't bode well. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to set up a scientific outpost. Now, the bad stuff – in terms of narrative and concerning over-the-top film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually go down for two more decades in the future, so even if we find a Martian gateway this year, we might have some time to avoid catastrophe. Were we to uncover a portal to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether Elon Musk would remain super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the discovery wasn't something he personally paid for, allowing him to claim messianic credit for humanity's expansion to the cosmos. This precedes we even get to the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent transformations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for why, exactly we allow Mars become a long-term aspiration for humanity. Be it in the director's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely act as a beacon of hope. If anyone wishes to make that dubious red-planet real estate sale, perhaps they ought to begin with at least ensuring the fictional depiction appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the goofiest quirks of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the multiple world-threatening disasters, encompassing a half-decade leap whose occurrences are mostly undepicted in the movies themselves; the films have turned into a clock radio constantly set a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that fan sites helpfully explain to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so seem quite detached from our sense of time. But the bad stuff is among the weakest Marvel has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by 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 crucial to future events. More troublingly, in the actual world that claim will likely prove correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, starting its timeline approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s human population has run its course, and also boosted the intelligence of primates, it’s only 2026, with further human indignities (and simian triumphs) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this virus propagates globally and set in 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; astonishingly, we’re now half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though clearly wounded by the still-spreading virus, was not annihilated, and our technology definitely hasn't been disabled. But this bleakest of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a substantial bummer to offer, suggesting that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as each, will unavoidably result in violent conflict, no matter the efforts of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, even if those drives are not held by the majority. Currently, it feels difficult to dispute that, even though we probably should.

Metropolis

Easily the most prominent depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing celebrating its centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where wealthy industrialists preside over the towers as laborers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that power the city. Affluent city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive class divisions when he falls for Maria, an subterranean organizer who advocates for a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans creates a robot in her likeness, aiming to bring the entire Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a machine designed to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but someone who wants to see them destroyed; it's a component flipped by reality in a future that in other ways seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery depends on traditional human toil, which appears as a perfect union of rightwing disdain for “unskilled workers” and business enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet materialized, 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 wealthy and the have-nots is spanned with compassion; rather than with concrete reforms. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the possibility