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The date 2025 could appear more futuristic. Maybe it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 represents a leap forward, a moment where we find ourselves, with every science-fiction-style advancement – chiefly the widespread adoption of AI – appearing bleak, or possibly more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed anti-human technology might function a bit better?) Did no one sound the alarm regarding this?

The answer, particularly regarding our sci-fi movies made long ago (or occasionally recently) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail implausible (if humanity is inevitably decimated, we will almost certainly take the ape population with us). Some of them are visionary; the rest just resemble bad green screen. But it's worth examining where different film-makers, ranging from masters to journeymen, thought we'd be positioned by this time in the world's development. Therefore, we shall take a look a selection of the films that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they have anything to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this isn't promising. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth can establish a research facility. Currently, the bad stuff – regarding narrative and concerning garish cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually transpire for two more decades in the future, so should we do discover a Martian gateway this year, we might have some time to avert true disaster. If we did discover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether Elon Musk would remain super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the portal was not a thing he funded himself, enabling him to assert savior-like ownership for humanity's expansion to the cosmos. This precedes we even get to the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting mutations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for why, exactly we allow Mars serve as a long-term hope for humanity. Be it in John Carpenter's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to serve as a beacon of hope. Should someone wishes to make that questionable Martian property deal, perhaps they should start with at least ensuring the fictional depiction look good.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the strangest features of the current MCU is the way it handles the multiple global disasters, including a five-year time-jump whose events are mostly undepicted in the movies themselves; the films have become like a clock radio perpetually set a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of MCU content that fan sites helpfully explain to be taking place 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 quite unmoored from any concrete sense of time. But the poorer material is among the weakest Marvel has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're facing a whole lot of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the related spin that actually, this confusing mess happening in front of us is crucial to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the real world that claim will probably turn out to be accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, starting its chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a pathogen that knocks out most of Earth’s people has done its damage, and also enhanced the intelligence of primates, it’s merely 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this contagion spreads globally 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; if you can believe it, we’re already half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though clearly impacted by the still-spreading virus, was not wiped out, and technological infrastructure certainly hasn't been knocked out. Yet this most pessimistic of the four modern *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a significant bummer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines either, will inevitably result in violent conflict, regardless of the work of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, although those instincts are not held by the majority. Right now, it seems difficult to argue with that, even though we probably should.

The Silent Classic

By far the best-known portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing marking its centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen preside over the skyscrapers as workers work tirelessly underground on the machines that keep everything running. Affluent surface resident Freder, son of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these enormous social gaps when he falls for Maria, an underground organizer who advocates for a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans builds a automaton in her image, aiming to bring the whole of Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a robot designed to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but an entity who desires to witness their downfall; it's a component inverted by reality in a future that in other ways appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology depends on traditional human toil, which seems like a perfect fusion of conservative disdain for “unskilled workers” and business enthusiasm for an tech boom. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's easy to picture a slightly more utilitarian version of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The trickier, less plausible feat is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is bridged with love; rather than with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the chance