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The date 2025 might sound more futuristic. Maybe it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies a leap forward, a moment where we currently stand, with each science-fiction-style advancement – primarily the broad integration of AI – appearing bleak, or perhaps more grim. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored anti-human technology might operate a bit better?) Did no one warn us about this?

The answer, particularly regarding science fiction films made long ago (or occasionally recently) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of those warnings are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but in detail far-fetched (when mankind is inevitably ravaged, we will almost certainly take the ape population with us). Others of them are prescient; others just resemble poor visual effects. Yet it remains valuable to explore where different directors, from geniuses to grunts, thought we'd be situated by this time in the world's evolution. Therefore, we shall examine a selection of the films that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and see if they contain any lessons to teach us.

Doom

Well, this isn't promising. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can set up a research facility. Now, the negative events – in terms of plot and concerning garish film versions of a FPS video game – does not actually transpire for another 20 years later, so even if we find a Martian gateway now, we could gain a respite to avoid catastrophe. If we did discover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would remain extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the discovery wasn't something he personally paid for, enabling him to claim savior-like credit for humanity's journey to the cosmos. That's before we even get to the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent mutations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for the reasons we allow Mars become a stretch-goal hope for mankind. Be it in the director's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely serve as a symbol of optimism. Should someone wishes to close that questionable red-planet property deal, perhaps they should start with at least ensuring the fictional depiction look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the strangest features of the current MCU is how to account for the various world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose events are mostly not shown in the films themselves; the films 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 MCU content that fan sites clarify to be set 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 feel quite unmoored from any concrete sense of time. But the poorer material is some of the worst the studio has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're in for a great deal of frustrating stagnation in 2026, along with the accompanying spin that actually, this nonsensical crap unfolding in front of us is essential to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that assertion will likely prove accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series is located in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, starting its chronology around 2016. So by the time a pathogen that devastates most of Earth’s people has done its damage, and simultaneously boosted the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s merely 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this contagion spreads globally and taking place around 2019, appears downright eerie in the wake of the actual pandemic that would begin in 2020. By comparison, 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 impacted by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been annihilated, and our technology certainly hasn't been disabled. But this most pessimistic of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a substantial downer to offer, suggesting that human and/or ape nature, however one defines each, will unavoidably result in warfare, no matter the work of the best-intentioned among us. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, although those drives are not held by the majority. Right now, it seems hard to argue with that, even though we ought to try.

Metropolis

Easily the best-known depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing marking its centennial. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists lord over the skyscrapers as laborers toil below the surface on the equipment that keep everything running. Rich surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these enormous social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground activist who advocates for a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans creates a automaton in her image, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. Here, a robot designed to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who desires to witness their downfall; it's a component inverted by reality in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology relies on traditional human toil, which seems like a perfect fusion of conservative contempt for “unskilled workers” and corporate zeal for an AI bubble. It has not yet come to pass, but it's easy to imagine a slightly more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a return to manufacturing. The trickier, less plausible accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the poor is spanned with compassion; not so much with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the possibility