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The date 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 represents one step beyond, and it's where we find ourselves, with every science-fiction-style development – chiefly the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – seeming dystopian, or perhaps more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored anti-human technology would actually function more effectively?) Didn't anyone warn us about this?

The answer, particularly concerning our sci-fi movies made long ago (or occasionally recently) set in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of those warnings are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but specifically far-fetched (when mankind is ultimately ravaged, we will almost certainly bring down the primate species with us). Some of them are visionary; the rest just look like bad green screen. But it's worth examining where different directors, from geniuses to grunts, thought we'd be positioned by now in our planet's development. Therefore, we shall examine a selection of the movies that have been set in 2026 over the years and determine if they contain any lessons to impart.

Doom

Now, this isn't promising. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to set up a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – regarding narrative and in terms of garish cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually go down for another 20 years later, so even if we do discover a Martian gateway now, we might have some time to avert true disaster. Were we to discover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether Elon Musk would remain extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the discovery was not a thing he personally paid for, allowing him to claim savior-like ownership for mankind's journey to the cosmos. That's before we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent mutations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for the reasons we let Mars become a long-term hope for humanity. Whether in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to serve as a beacon of optimism. If anyone wants to close that dubious Martian property deal, perhaps they ought to begin with at least making the fictional depiction appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the strangest features of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the various global disasters, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose events are largely undepicted in the movies themselves; the films have turned into a clock radio constantly running a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's years. So there's a large assortment of Marvel stuff that fan sites helpfully explain to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so feel pretty detached from any concrete sense of time. However the bad stuff is among the weakest the studio has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on this stuff, we're facing a great deal of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, including the related spin that actually, this confusing mess happening before our eyes is essential to future events. More troublingly, in the real world that claim will probably prove accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is located in the further-flung future of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, initiating its timeline approximately 2016. Thus, when a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s people has run its course, and also boosted the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s merely 2026, with further human indignities (and simian triumphs) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this contagion propagates globally and taking place in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the wake of the actual pandemic that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; if you can believe it, we’re now half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly impacted by the ongoing virus, was not wiped out, and our technology definitely hasn't been disabled. But this bleakest of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a substantial bummer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines each, will inevitably lead to warfare, no matter the efforts of the best-intentioned individuals. 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 difficult 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 celebrating its centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where rich businessmen preside over the skyscrapers as laborers toil underground on the machines that power the city. Rich surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these enormous social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground activist who preaches a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans builds a robot in her likeness, aiming to tear the whole of Metropolis to ruin. Here, a machine created to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but someone who wants to witness their downfall; it's one element flipped by reality in a future that in other ways seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery relies on traditional human toil, which appears as a perfect fusion of rightwing contempt for “the working class” and business zeal for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's simple to imagine a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a return to industrial production. The more complex, less plausible accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the haves and the poor is bridged with love; not so much with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the possibility