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The date 2025 might sound more futuristic. Perhaps it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies a leap forward, and it's where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style development – chiefly the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – seeming dystopian, or possibly more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored anti-human technology would actually function more effectively?) Did no one sound the alarm about this?

The answer, particularly concerning science fiction films made long ago (or sometimes recently) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of those warnings are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but in detail implausible (if humanity is ultimately ravaged, we will most likely take the ape population with us). Some of them are prescient; the rest just look like bad green screen. But it's valuable to explore where different directors, from geniuses to journeymen, believed we'd be situated by now in the world's development. Therefore, we shall take a look a selection of the films that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they have anything to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this isn't promising. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can establish a research facility. Now, the bad stuff – regarding narrative and concerning over-the-top film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really transpire for another 20 years in the future, so should we do discover a Martian gateway this year, we could gain some time to avoid true disaster. If we did discover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would still be extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the discovery was not a thing he personally paid for, enabling him to claim messianic ownership for mankind's journey into the stars. That's before we consider the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and resulting mutations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for why, exactly we let Mars become a long-term hope for mankind. Whether in John Carpenter's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely act as a symbol of optimism. If anyone wishes to close that questionable Martian real estate sale, perhaps they should start with first making the fantasy version appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the strangest features of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the multiple world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are mostly undepicted in the films themselves; the films have turned into a alarm clock constantly running a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of MCU content that various wikis clarify to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, take place distant from Earth, and so seem pretty unmoored from our sense of time. But the bad stuff is among the weakest the studio has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're in for a whole lot of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, including the accompanying narrative that actually, this confusing mess unfolding before our eyes is essential to future events. Even worse, in the real world that claim will probably prove accurate.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, starting its timeline approximately 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that knocks out most of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and simultaneously enhanced the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s merely 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this contagion spreads globally and set in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the real-world pandemic that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; astonishingly, we’re already six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously wounded by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been wiped out, and technological infrastructure certainly has not been knocked out. But this bleakest of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a substantial bummer to offer, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines either, will inevitably lead to warfare, regardless of the work of the most well-meaning among us. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, even if those drives don't represent the majority. Right now, it feels hard to argue with that, despite the fact that we probably should.

The Silent Classic

Easily the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to celebrating its 100th anniversary. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen lord over the towers as laborers work tirelessly underground on the machines that keep everything running. Affluent surface resident Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these enormous class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean activist who preaches a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans creates a robot in her likeness, aiming to tear the entire Metropolis down in flames. Here, a robot created to imitate a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who wants to witness their downfall; it's one element inverted by reality in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery depends on traditional human toil, which seems like a most logical fusion of rightwing disdain for “the working class” and business enthusiasm for an tech boom. It has not yet come to pass, but it's easy to imagine a somewhat more utilitarian version of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The more complex, less plausible feat is the ending of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the poor is bridged with compassion; not so much with concrete reforms. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the possibility