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The date 2025 could appear more futuristic. Maybe it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 represents one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with each futuristic development – primarily the broad integration of AI – seeming dystopian, or possibly more grim. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored anti-human technology might operate a bit better?) Did no one sound the alarm about this?

The answer, particularly regarding science fiction films made long ago (or sometimes recently) set in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of those warnings are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but specifically implausible (if humanity is ultimately ravaged, we will most likely bring down the primate species alongside us). Some of them are visionary; others just resemble bad visual effects. Yet it remains valuable to explore where different directors, ranging from masters to journeymen, believed we'd be situated by now in our planet's evolution. Therefore, we shall take a look at some of the movies that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they contain any lessons to impart.

Doom

Well, this isn't promising. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to establish a research facility. Currently, the bad stuff – in terms of narrative and concerning over-the-top film versions of a FPS video game – does not actually go down for two more decades later, so should we find a portal to Mars this year, we might have a respite to avoid true disaster. Were we to uncover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether Elon Musk would still be super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the portal wasn't something he personally paid for, enabling him to claim messianic ownership for humanity's expansion into the stars. This precedes we even get to the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and subsequent transformations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for the reasons we allow Mars become a long-term hope for mankind. Be it in John Carpenter's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to serve as a symbol of optimism. If anyone wishes to close that dubious red-planet property deal, maybe they should start with first ensuring the fictional depiction appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the goofiest quirks of the current MCU is the way it handles the various world-threatening cataclysms, including a half-decade leap whose occurrences are mostly not shown in the films themselves; the movies have become like a clock radio constantly running a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a large assortment of MCU content that fan sites helpfully explain to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so feel pretty detached from any concrete sense of time. But the bad stuff is some of the worst the studio has created: the nonsensically meandering 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 whole lot of annoying stagnation in 2026, including the related spin that actually, this nonsensical crap unfolding in front of us is essential to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the real world that assertion will likely turn out to be correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, starting its chronology around 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s people has run its course, and also enhanced the intelligence of primates, it’s merely 2026, with additional human indignities (and simian triumphs) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this virus spreads globally and taking place around 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the real-world pandemic that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re already half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though obviously wounded by the ongoing virus, was not annihilated, and our technology definitely hasn't been knocked out. Yet this bleakest of the four modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a significant downer in store, suggesting that human and/or ape nature, however one defines either, will unavoidably lead to violent conflict, no matter the work of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, even if those instincts don't represent the majority. Right now, it feels difficult to argue with that, even though we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

By far the best-known portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where wealthy industrialists lord over the skyscrapers as workers toil below the surface on the machines that power the city. Affluent surface resident Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive social gaps when he falls for Maria, an underground activist who advocates for a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans builds a automaton in her image, aiming to tear the entire Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a machine designed to mimic a human isn't a tool of the elite, but someone who desires to witness their downfall; it's a component flipped by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology depends on old-fashioned manual labor, which appears as a perfect union of conservative disdain for “unskilled workers” and business enthusiasm for an tech boom. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's simple to imagine a somewhat more utilitarian version of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The more complex, less plausible feat is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is spanned with love; rather than with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the chance