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The date 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 represents one step beyond, a moment where we find ourselves, with every science-fiction-style development – chiefly the widespread adoption of AI – seeming bleak, or perhaps even worse. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored anti-human technology might function more effectively?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm about this?

The answer, particularly regarding our sci-fi movies from years ago (or occasionally recently) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of those warnings are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but in detail 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 resemble poor visual effects. But it's valuable to explore where different directors, ranging from masters to journeymen, thought we'd be situated by this time in our planet's development. So let's examine at some of the films that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and see if they contain any lessons to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this doesn't bode well. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to set up a scientific outpost. Currently, the negative events – in terms of narrative and in terms of garish film versions of a FPS video game – does not actually transpire for two more decades later, so even if we do discover a Martian gateway now, we might have some time to avert true disaster. If we did uncover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether Elon Musk would remain extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the discovery was not a thing he personally paid for, allowing him to assert messianic credit for humanity's expansion to the cosmos. This precedes we even get to the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting mutations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for the reasons we let Mars become a long-term hope for mankind. Be it in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely act as a beacon of optimism. Should someone wants to close that questionable Martian real estate sale, perhaps they ought to begin with at least ensuring the fantasy version look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the strangest features of the current MCU is how to account for the multiple world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a half-decade leap whose occurrences are mostly undepicted in the films themselves; the movies have become like a clock radio constantly set a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that various wikis clarify to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so seem pretty detached from any concrete sense of time. However the bad stuff is some of the worst Marvel has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on this stuff, we're facing a whole lot of frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the related narrative that actually, this nonsensical crap happening before our eyes is essential to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the actual world that assertion will probably prove correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the classic 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* begins closer to home, starting its chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out the majority of Earth’s people has done its damage, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of apes, it’s only 2026, with further human indignities (and simian triumphs) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this virus spreads globally and set around 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the wake of the actual global health crisis that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; astonishingly, we’re now six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though clearly wounded by the ongoing virus, was not wiped out, and technological infrastructure certainly has not been knocked out. Yet this most pessimistic of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a substantial bummer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will unavoidably result in violent conflict, regardless of the efforts of the most well-meaning among us. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, although those drives are not held by the majority. Currently, it feels hard to argue with that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

Metropolis

By far the most prominent depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing celebrating its centennial. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen preside over the towers as workers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that power the city. Rich surface resident Freder, son of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these enormous class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean activist who preaches a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans builds a automaton in her image, hoping to tear the entire Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a robot designed to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who wants to witness their downfall; it's a component flipped by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology relies on traditional manual labor, which appears as a most logical union of rightwing contempt for “unskilled workers” and business enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's simple to picture a somewhat less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a return to manufacturing. The more complex, less plausible accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the poor is bridged with love; rather than with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the chance