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The date 2025 might sound more futuristic. Perhaps it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 represents one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with each science-fiction-style advancement – primarily the broad integration of artificial intelligence – seeming bleak, or possibly even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored anti-human technology would actually function a bit better?) Did no one sound the alarm about this?

The response, particularly concerning our sci-fi movies from years ago (or occasionally recently) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of these prophecies are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but specifically implausible (if humanity is ultimately decimated, we will almost certainly take the primate species alongside us). Others of them are prescient; others just resemble bad green screen. Yet it remains worth examining where different film-makers, from geniuses to grunts, thought we'd be situated by now in the world's evolution. Therefore, we shall examine at some of the movies that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they contain any lessons to impart.

Doom

Well, this doesn't bode well. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to establish a research facility. Now, the bad stuff – in terms of plot and in terms of garish film versions of a FPS video game – doesn't really transpire for two more decades later, so should we find a Martian gateway this year, we might have some time to avert true disaster. Were we to discover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would still be extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the portal wasn't something he personally paid for, allowing him to claim messianic credit for mankind's expansion into the stars. This precedes we even get to the collection of Martian chromosomes and subsequent transformations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is closer to 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 stretch-goal hope for mankind. Whether in John Carpenter's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely act as a beacon of optimism. If anyone wants to make that dubious Martian property deal, perhaps they ought to begin with at least making the fictional depiction appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the goofiest quirks of the current MCU is how to account for the multiple world-threatening cataclysms, including a half-decade leap whose occurrences are mostly not shown in the films themselves; the movies have turned into a clock radio perpetually set a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that fan sites helpfully explain to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so seem pretty unmoored from our sense of time. But 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*. Judging by these examples, we're facing a great deal of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the related spin that in truth, this confusing mess happening before our eyes is essential to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the real world that claim will probably 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 further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, initiating its chronology around 2016. Thus, when a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of primates, it’s merely 2026, with additional human indignities (and victories for apes) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this virus propagates globally and set in 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the wake of the real-world global health crisis that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re already six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though obviously wounded by the ongoing virus, hasn't been annihilated, and technological infrastructure definitely hasn't been disabled. But this most pessimistic of the four modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a substantial downer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will unavoidably result in violent conflict, no matter the efforts of the most well-meaning among us. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, although those drives don't represent the majority. Currently, it seems difficult to argue with that, despite the fact that we probably should.

The Silent Classic

Easily the most prominent depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing celebrating its centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists preside over the towers as laborers toil underground on the equipment that power the city. Affluent city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these enormous class divisions when he falls for Maria, an underground organizer who advocates for a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans builds a robot in her likeness, hoping to tear the entire Metropolis down in flames. Here, a robot designed to mimic a human isn't a tool of the elite, but someone who desires to see them destroyed; it's a component inverted by the modern world in a future that otherwise seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery relies on traditional human toil, which appears as a perfect union of rightwing contempt for “the working class” and corporate zeal for an AI bubble. It has not yet materialized, but it's easy to imagine a slightly less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a resurgence to industrial production. The more complex, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the poor is bridged with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the possibility