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The date 2025 might sound more futuristic. Maybe it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 represents a leap forward, a moment where we currently stand, with each futuristic advancement – chiefly the broad integration of AI – appearing bleak, or possibly even worse. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology might operate a bit better?) Did no one sound the alarm about this?

The answer, particularly concerning science fiction films made long ago (or occasionally months ago) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of these prophecies are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but specifically implausible (when mankind is ultimately decimated, we will almost certainly bring down the ape population with us). Others of them are visionary; the rest just look like bad visual effects. Yet it remains worth examining where different directors, from geniuses to grunts, thought we'd be situated by this time in our planet's evolution. So let's examine at some of the films that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they contain any lessons to impart.

Doom

Now, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Currently, the negative events – in terms of narrative and concerning garish film versions of a FPS video game – does not actually transpire for another 20 years in the future, so even if we do discover a portal to Mars this year, we could gain a respite to avoid true disaster. Were we to uncover 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 discovery was not a thing he funded himself, enabling him to assert savior-like ownership for mankind's expansion to the cosmos. That's before we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting mutations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for the reasons we allow Mars serve as a stretch-goal hope for mankind. Whether in John Carpenter's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to act as a beacon of hope. Should someone wants to close that questionable Martian property deal, perhaps they should start with at least ensuring the fantasy version appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the strangest features of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the multiple global disasters, encompassing a half-decade leap whose occurrences are largely not shown in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a alarm clock constantly set a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. So there's a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that various wikis clarify to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated adventure *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so seem quite detached from any concrete sense of time. But the bad stuff is among the weakest the studio has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by this stuff, we're in for a great deal of annoying stagnation in 2026, along with the related narrative that in truth, this nonsensical crap happening in front of us is crucial to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will likely turn out to be correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the more distant future of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, initiating its timeline approximately 2016. Thus, when a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s people has run its course, and also boosted the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s merely 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this contagion spreads around the world and set in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the real-world pandemic that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; 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 wiped out, and technological infrastructure certainly hasn't been knocked out. Yet this bleakest of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a substantial bummer in store, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will unavoidably lead to warfare, no matter the efforts of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, even if those drives are not held by the most. Currently, it feels difficult to argue with that, even though we probably should.

The Silent Classic

By far the most prominent depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to marking its 100th anniversary. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen preside over the towers as laborers toil underground on the equipment that keep everything running. Rich surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these massive class divisions when he falls for Maria, an subterranean activist who preaches a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans builds a robot in her image, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a robot created to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who wants to see them destroyed; it's a component inverted by the modern world in a future that otherwise seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology relies on old-fashioned manual labor, which appears as a perfect fusion of conservative contempt for “unskilled workers” and corporate enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It has not yet materialized, but it's simple to picture a somewhat less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city growing 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 have-nots is spanned with love; rather than with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the possibility