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The date 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 represents one step beyond, a moment where we find ourselves, with every futuristic development – primarily the widespread adoption of AI – seeming dystopian, or possibly more grim. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology would actually operate more effectively?) Did no one sound the alarm regarding this?

The response, at least regarding science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally months ago) set in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but specifically implausible (if humanity is ultimately ravaged, we will most likely bring down the primate species with us). Some of them are visionary; others just look like bad visual effects. Yet it remains valuable to explore where different directors, ranging from masters to grunts, thought we'd be situated by this time in our planet's evolution. So let's examine at some of the films that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they contain any lessons to impart.

Doom

Well, this isn't promising. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Currently, the bad stuff – regarding plot and in terms of over-the-top film versions of a FPS video game – doesn't really transpire for two more decades in the future, so even if we find a portal to Mars this year, we could gain some time to avert catastrophe. Were we to uncover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would still be extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the discovery was not a thing he funded himself, enabling him to claim savior-like credit for humanity's expansion to the cosmos. That's before we consider the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and subsequent mutations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for the reasons we allow Mars serve as a long-term hope for mankind. Whether in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely serve as a beacon of hope. If anyone wishes to make that questionable Martian property deal, maybe they ought to begin with at least ensuring the fictional depiction look good.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the goofiest quirks of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the multiple world-threatening disasters, encompassing a half-decade leap whose occurrences are largely undepicted in the films themselves; the movies have turned into a clock radio constantly running a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a large assortment 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*, occur distant from Earth, and so feel quite detached from our sense of time. However the bad stuff is among the weakest Marvel has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're facing a great deal of annoying stagnation in 2026, including the accompanying spin that in truth, this nonsensical crap happening in front of us is crucial to future events. More troublingly, in the real world that assertion will likely prove correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is located in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, initiating its timeline approximately 2016. So by the time a pathogen that knocks out the majority of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously boosted the intelligence of primates, it’s only 2026, with additional human indignities (and victories for apes) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this virus propagates around the world and set around 2019, appears downright eerie in the wake of the actual global health crisis that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; astonishingly, we’re now six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though clearly impacted by the ongoing virus, hasn't been wiped out, and technological infrastructure definitely hasn't been disabled. But this bleakest of the four modern *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a substantial downer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines each, will inevitably result in violent conflict, regardless of the work of the most well-meaning among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, although those drives are not held by the most. Currently, it seems hard to dispute that, despite the fact that we probably should.

The Silent Classic

By far the best-known depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing marking its 100th anniversary. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where wealthy industrialists preside over the towers as laborers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that keep everything running. Rich city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive class divisions when he falls for Maria, an subterranean organizer who preaches a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans creates a robot in her image, hoping to bring the whole of Metropolis to ruin. Here, a robot designed to mimic a human isn't a tool of the elite, but an entity who desires to see them destroyed; it's a component flipped by reality in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology depends on traditional manual labor, which seems like a perfect fusion of conservative contempt for “unskilled workers” and business enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It has not yet materialized, but it's simple to imagine a somewhat less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a resurgence to manufacturing. The more complex, less plausible feat is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is bridged with love; not so much with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the possibility