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The date 2025 might sound more futuristic. Maybe it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies a leap forward, a moment where we find ourselves, with each science-fiction-style advancement – primarily the widespread adoption of AI – appearing dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored anti-human technology would actually function a bit better?) Didn't anyone warn us about this?

The answer, particularly concerning our sci-fi movies made long ago (or occasionally months ago) set in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail implausible (if humanity is ultimately ravaged, we will most likely bring down the ape population alongside us). Some of them are prescient; the rest just look like poor visual effects. But it's worth examining where various directors, from geniuses to grunts, believed we'd be positioned by now in our planet's development. Therefore, we shall examine at some of the films that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and determine if they contain any lessons to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to set up a scientific outpost. Currently, the bad stuff – regarding plot and concerning garish film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually go down for two more decades later, so even if we do discover a Martian gateway this year, we could gain some time to avert true disaster. If we did uncover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would still be super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the discovery was not a thing he funded himself, enabling him to assert messianic ownership for humanity's expansion into the stars. That's before we consider the collection of Martian chromosomes and subsequent transformations into horrific creatures. (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 why, exactly we allow Mars become a stretch-goal hope for mankind. Be it in the director's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to act as a symbol of hope. Should someone wants to make that dubious Martian real estate sale, perhaps they should start with first ensuring the fantasy version look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the strangest features of the current MCU is how to account for the multiple world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are largely undepicted in the films themselves; the movies have turned into a alarm clock perpetually running a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that various wikis clarify to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so feel quite unmoored from our sense of time. However the poorer material is some of the worst Marvel has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by this stuff, we're facing a great deal of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the accompanying narrative that in truth, this confusing mess happening in front of us is crucial to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will likely prove correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, starting its timeline approximately 2016. Thus, when a virus that devastates most of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and simultaneously enhanced the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s merely 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this contagion spreads globally and taking place in 2019, appears downright eerie in the aftermath of the real-world global health crisis that would dawn 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 obviously wounded by the still-spreading virus, was not wiped out, and our technology certainly hasn't been disabled. But this most pessimistic of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a significant downer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will inevitably lead to violent conflict, no matter the work of the best-intentioned among us. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, even if those instincts are not held by the majority. Right now, it feels hard to argue with that, even though we ought to try.

Metropolis

By far the best-known depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing marking its 100th anniversary. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen lord over the skyscrapers as laborers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that power the city. Rich surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these enormous class divisions when he falls for Maria, an underground organizer who advocates for a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans builds a automaton in her likeness, hoping to tear the entire Metropolis to ruin. Here, a machine designed to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but someone who wants to see them destroyed; it's a component flipped by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery relies on old-fashioned manual labor, which appears as a perfect fusion of conservative disdain for “the working class” and business enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's simple to picture a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a return to manufacturing. The more complex, harder-to-imagine feat is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the have-nots is spanned with love; not so much with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the possibility