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The date 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 represents a leap forward, a moment where we currently stand, with each futuristic advancement – primarily the widespread adoption of AI – appearing dystopian, or perhaps more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed dehumanizing technology would actually operate more effectively?) Did no one warn us regarding this?

The response, particularly concerning science fiction films from years ago (or sometimes months ago) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but specifically far-fetched (when mankind is ultimately ravaged, we will almost certainly take the primate species with us). Some of them are visionary; others just resemble bad green screen. Yet it remains worth examining where different directors, ranging from masters to journeymen, thought we'd be situated by now in the world's development. So let's take a look at some of the films that have been set in 2026 over the years and determine if they contain any lessons to impart.

Doom

Now, this doesn't bode well. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to establish a research facility. Now, the negative events – regarding narrative and in terms of garish film versions of a FPS video game – doesn't really transpire for two more decades later, so even if we do discover a Martian gateway now, we could gain some time to avert true disaster. If we did discover a portal to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether Elon Musk would still be super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the discovery was not a thing he personally paid for, enabling him to claim messianic ownership for mankind's expansion to the cosmos. That's before we even get to the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent transformations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for the reasons we let Mars become a long-term aspiration for humanity. Whether in the director's cheap-looking 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 act as a symbol of hope. If anyone wants to make that dubious Martian real estate sale, perhaps they should start with at least making the fantasy version appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the goofiest quirks of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the various global cataclysms, encompassing a half-decade leap whose events are mostly undepicted in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a alarm clock perpetually running a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that various wikis clarify to be set in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, take place distant from Earth, and so feel pretty detached from our sense of time. However the bad stuff is among the weakest the studio has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're facing a great deal of frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the related spin that in truth, this confusing mess happening in front of us is crucial to future events. More troublingly, in the real world that assertion will likely prove correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the more distant future of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, starting its chronology approximately 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that knocks out most of Earth’s human population has run its course, and also enhanced the intelligence of apes, it’s merely 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this virus propagates globally and taking place in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the real-world global health crisis that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; astonishingly, we’re now six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously wounded by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been annihilated, and technological infrastructure certainly hasn't been disabled. But this bleakest of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a substantial bummer in store, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will inevitably result in warfare, no matter the efforts of the best-intentioned among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, although those drives don't represent the majority. Currently, it feels difficult to dispute that, despite the fact that we probably should.

The Silent Classic

Easily the best-known portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing marking its 100th anniversary. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where rich businessmen lord over the skyscrapers as workers work tirelessly underground on the machines that keep everything running. Affluent city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these enormous class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground organizer who preaches a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans builds a robot in her image, hoping to tear the entire Metropolis down in flames. Here, a machine designed to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who desires to see them destroyed; it's a component flipped by reality in a future that in other ways appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology relies on old-fashioned manual labor, which seems like a perfect union of rightwing contempt for “unskilled workers” and business zeal for an tech boom. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's simple to imagine a slightly more utilitarian version of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The more complex, harder-to-imagine feat is the ending of the film, where the gap between the haves and the poor is spanned with love; rather than with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the possibility