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The date 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies a leap forward, a moment where we currently stand, with each futuristic advancement – primarily the widespread adoption of AI – appearing bleak, or possibly even worse. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology might function a bit better?) Did no one sound the alarm regarding this?

The answer, at least concerning science fiction films from years ago (or sometimes recently) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of these prophecies are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but specifically far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably decimated, we will most likely bring down the ape population with us). Some of them are prescient; 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 evolution. So let's take a look a selection of the movies that have been set in 2026 over the years and determine if they have anything to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this isn't promising. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – regarding plot and concerning over-the-top cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – does not actually transpire for another 20 years in the future, so even if we do discover a Martian gateway now, we could gain some time to avoid true disaster. Were we to discover a passageway to an ancient 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 portal wasn't something he funded himself, allowing him to claim messianic ownership for humanity's journey to the cosmos. This precedes we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent mutations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for why, exactly we let Mars serve as a stretch-goal aspiration for humanity. Be it in the director's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to serve as a symbol of hope. Should someone wishes to make that questionable red-planet real estate sale, perhaps they ought to begin with at least ensuring the fantasy version 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 disasters, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose events are mostly undepicted in the films themselves; the movies have turned into a alarm clock constantly running a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of Marvel stuff that various wikis helpfully explain to be taking place in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, take place distant from Earth, and so seem quite unmoored from any concrete sense of time. However the bad stuff is among the weakest the studio has created: the nonsensically meandering 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 whole lot of annoying stagnation in 2026, along with the accompanying narrative that actually, this confusing mess unfolding in front of us is essential to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the real world that claim will probably turn out to be correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle 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 chronology approximately 2016. Thus, when a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s human population has run its course, and simultaneously boosted the intelligence of apes, it’s only 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this contagion propagates around the world and set in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual pandemic that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; astonishingly, we’re already six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though obviously wounded by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been wiped out, and our technology definitely hasn't been knocked out. But this bleakest of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a significant downer to offer, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably lead to violent conflict, no matter the efforts of the most well-meaning among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, although those instincts are not held by the majority. Currently, it seems hard to argue with that, even though we probably should.

Metropolis

By far the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing celebrating its centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists preside over the skyscrapers as laborers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that power the city. Affluent city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive class divisions when he falls for Maria, an subterranean activist who preaches a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans builds a robot in her likeness, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a robot designed to mimic a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who desires to see them destroyed; it's one element flipped by the modern world in a future that otherwise seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology depends on traditional human toil, which appears as a perfect fusion of conservative disdain for “the working class” and business enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's easy to imagine a slightly more utilitarian version of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a resurgence to manufacturing. The more complex, less plausible feat is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the poor is spanned with love; not so much with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the chance