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The date 2025 could appear more futuristic. Perhaps it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies a leap forward, and it's where we find ourselves, with every futuristic development – primarily the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – appearing dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology would actually operate more effectively?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm regarding this?

The response, particularly regarding science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally months ago) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of these prophecies are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but in detail far-fetched (when mankind is ultimately ravaged, we will almost certainly bring down the ape population alongside us). Some of them are prescient; the rest just resemble poor green screen. But it's worth examining where different directors, from geniuses to journeymen, believed we'd be situated by this time in the world's evolution. So let's examine at some 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. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to set up a research facility. Currently, the negative events – regarding narrative and in terms of over-the-top film versions of a FPS video game – does not actually transpire for two more decades later, so should we find a portal to Mars this year, we could gain a respite to avoid true disaster. If we did discover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether Elon Musk would remain super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the portal wasn't something he personally paid for, enabling him to claim savior-like credit for humanity's journey into the stars. This precedes we even get to the collection of Martian chromosomes and resulting mutations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a good test case for the reasons we allow Mars serve as a stretch-goal aspiration for mankind. Be it in John Carpenter'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 distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to serve as a symbol of optimism. If anyone wants to make that dubious Martian property deal, perhaps they should start with first ensuring the fictional depiction appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the goofiest quirks of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the various world-threatening disasters, encompassing a half-decade leap whose events are largely undepicted in the movies themselves; the movies have turned into a clock radio perpetually set a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a large assortment of MCU content that various wikis helpfully explain to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated adventure *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so feel pretty unmoored from any concrete sense of time. But the bad stuff is among the weakest Marvel has created: the convoluted and aimless 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 stagnation in 2026, along with the accompanying spin that actually, this nonsensical crap unfolding in front of us is crucial to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that assertion will likely prove accurate.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, initiating its chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out the majority of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and also enhanced the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s merely 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this virus spreads globally and taking place in 2019, appears downright eerie in the aftermath of the real-world global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re now half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though clearly wounded by the ongoing virus, hasn't been annihilated, and our technology definitely has not been disabled. Yet this most pessimistic of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a substantial downer to offer, suggesting that human and/or ape nature, however one defines each, will unavoidably lead to violent conflict, regardless of the work of the most well-meaning among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, although those drives don't represent the most. Right now, it seems hard to argue with that, even though we probably should.

The Silent Classic

Easily the most prominent depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing marking its centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where rich businessmen 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 becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean organizer who preaches a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans creates a robot in her likeness, hoping to bring the entire Metropolis down in flames. Here, a robot designed to imitate a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who desires to witness their downfall; it's one element inverted by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery relies on old-fashioned human toil, which appears as a most logical fusion of conservative contempt for “the working class” and business zeal for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's simple to picture a somewhat less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a resurgence to industrial production. The trickier, less plausible feat is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the have-nots is spanned with love; not so much with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the possibility