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The date 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies a leap forward, and it's where we find ourselves, with every science-fiction-style advancement – primarily the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – seeming dystopian, or possibly more grim. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology might function more effectively?) Did no one warn us regarding this?

The answer, at least concerning our sci-fi movies made long ago (or sometimes months ago) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. 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 primate species with us). Others of them are prescient; the rest just look like poor visual effects. Yet it remains worth examining where different film-makers, ranging from masters to journeymen, believed we'd be situated by now in the world's evolution. So let's examine at some of the films that have been set in 2026 over the years and determine if they contain any lessons to impart.

Doom

Well, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by virtually no one, 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. Currently, the negative events – regarding narrative and concerning over-the-top film versions of a FPS video game – doesn't really go down for another 20 years later, so even if we find a Martian gateway this year, we might have some time to avoid true disaster. Were we to 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 dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the discovery was not a thing he funded himself, 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 resulting mutations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for why, exactly we allow Mars become a stretch-goal hope for humanity. Whether in the director's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to act as a beacon of hope. If anyone wishes to make that dubious red-planet real estate sale, perhaps they should start with at least ensuring the fictional depiction look good.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the goofiest quirks of the current MCU is the way it handles the multiple world-threatening disasters, including a half-decade leap whose events are mostly undepicted in the films themselves; the films have become like a alarm clock perpetually set a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of Marvel stuff that various wikis helpfully explain to be set in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, take place distant from Earth, and so seem pretty unmoored from our sense of time. But the poorer material is among the weakest the studio has ever produced: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by this stuff, we're in for a great deal of frustrating stagnation in 2026, along with the related spin that actually, this confusing mess unfolding in front of us is essential to future events. Even worse, in the real world that assertion will probably prove correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, starting its timeline around 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that knocks out most of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously boosted the intelligence of apes, it’s merely 2026, with additional human indignities (and victories for apes) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this contagion spreads around the world and taking place in 2019, looks downright eerie in the wake of the actual pandemic that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; if you can believe it, we’re already half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly wounded by the ongoing virus, was not annihilated, and our technology definitely has not been disabled. Yet this bleakest of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a significant bummer to offer, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will unavoidably lead to warfare, no matter the work of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, even if those drives are not held by the most. Currently, it seems hard to argue with that, even though we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

By far the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie close to marking its centennial. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen lord over the skyscrapers as laborers work tirelessly underground on the machines that keep everything running. Rich surface resident Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these enormous social gaps when he falls for Maria, an underground organizer who advocates for a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans creates a automaton in her image, aiming to bring the whole of Metropolis to ruin. Here, a machine created to mimic a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who desires to see them destroyed; it's one element flipped by the modern world in a future that otherwise seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery depends on traditional human toil, which appears as a most logical fusion of conservative contempt for “the working class” and business enthusiasm for an tech boom. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's simple to imagine a somewhat less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a resurgence to manufacturing. The more complex, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the haves and the poor is bridged with love; not so much with concrete reforms. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the chance