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The date 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 represents one step beyond, a moment where we find ourselves, with every futuristic development – primarily the broad integration of AI – appearing bleak, or possibly more grim. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored anti-human technology would actually function a bit better?) Did no one warn us about this?

The answer, at least regarding our sci-fi movies from years ago (or occasionally months ago) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of these prophecies are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but specifically implausible (when mankind is inevitably decimated, we will most likely bring down the ape population with us). Others of them are prescient; others just resemble bad green screen. But it's worth examining where different directors, from geniuses to grunts, believed we'd be positioned by now in the world's evolution. Therefore, we shall take a look at some of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they contain any lessons to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this doesn't bode well. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated 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 are able to set up a scientific outpost. Currently, the negative events – regarding plot and in terms of garish cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – doesn't really go down for another 20 years in the future, so even if we do discover a portal to Mars 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 tell whether a certain tech billionaire would remain extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the discovery wasn't something he personally paid for, allowing him to claim savior-like credit for humanity's expansion to the cosmos. This precedes we consider the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent transformations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for the reasons we allow Mars serve as a stretch-goal aspiration for humanity. Be it in the director's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely serve as a beacon of optimism. Should someone wants to close that questionable Martian real estate sale, perhaps they ought to begin with at least ensuring the fantasy version look good.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the goofiest quirks of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the various world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a half-decade leap whose occurrences are largely not shown in the movies themselves; the films have turned into a clock radio perpetually set a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of Marvel stuff that various wikis clarify to be set in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated adventure *The Marvels*, take place distant from Earth, and so feel pretty unmoored from any concrete sense of time. But the bad stuff is some of the worst the studio has ever produced: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on this stuff, we're facing a great deal of annoying stagnation in 2026, along with the accompanying spin that in truth, this nonsensical crap unfolding before our eyes is crucial to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the real world that claim will likely prove accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, initiating its chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a pathogen that knocks out most of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and also enhanced the intelligence of primates, it’s merely 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this contagion spreads around the world and taking place around 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the wake of the real-world global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re already six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly impacted by the still-spreading virus, was not wiped out, and our technology certainly hasn't been disabled. But this bleakest of the four modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a significant downer in store, implying that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably lead to warfare, no matter the efforts of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, although those drives are not held by the most. Currently, it feels hard to dispute that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

Metropolis

Easily the most prominent depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists lord over the towers as workers toil below the surface on the equipment that keep everything running. Affluent surface resident Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground organizer who advocates for a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans builds a automaton in her likeness, aiming to tear the entire Metropolis down in flames. Here, a robot designed to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but someone who desires to witness their downfall; it's one element flipped by reality in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery depends on old-fashioned human toil, which appears as a most logical union of conservative disdain for “the working class” and corporate enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It has not yet come to pass, but it's simple to imagine a somewhat less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The more complex, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is bridged with love; rather than with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the possibility