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The year 2025 might sound more futuristic. Maybe it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies a leap forward, and it's where we currently stand, with each futuristic development – primarily the broad integration of artificial intelligence – appearing dystopian, or possibly even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology might operate more effectively?) Did no one sound the alarm regarding this?

The response, particularly concerning our sci-fi movies from years ago (or sometimes recently) set in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of these prophecies are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but specifically far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably ravaged, we will almost certainly take the primate species with us). Some of them are visionary; the rest just look like poor visual effects. But it's worth examining where various film-makers, ranging from masters to grunts, thought we'd be positioned by now in the world's development. So let's examine a selection of the films that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they have anything to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this doesn't bode well. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Currently, the bad stuff – regarding narrative and concerning garish cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – does not actually transpire for two more decades in the future, so even if we find a Martian gateway this year, we might have a respite to avert catastrophe. If we did uncover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether Elon Musk 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 assert savior-like credit for mankind's expansion into the stars. That's before we even get to the collection of Martian chromosomes and resulting mutations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for the reasons we allow Mars serve as a long-term hope for mankind. Be it in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to act as a beacon 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 strangest features of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the various world-threatening cataclysms, including a five-year time-jump whose events are largely not shown in the films themselves; the movies have become like a clock radio perpetually set a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a large assortment of Marvel stuff that various wikis clarify to be taking place in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated romp *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so seem pretty unmoored from our sense of time. However the poorer material is among the weakest the studio has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're facing a whole lot of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the accompanying spin that in truth, this nonsensical crap unfolding in front of us is essential to future events. More troublingly, in the actual world that claim will probably turn out to be accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* series 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 chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out the majority of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of primates, it’s merely 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this contagion propagates globally and set in 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the wake of the actual pandemic that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; if you can believe it, we’re now six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though clearly wounded by the ongoing virus, hasn't been wiped out, and technological infrastructure definitely hasn't been disabled. Yet this bleakest of the four modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a substantial bummer in store, implying that human and/or ape nature, however one defines each, will unavoidably lead to warfare, no matter the efforts of the most well-meaning among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, even if those instincts are not held by the majority. Right now, it seems difficult to dispute that, despite the fact that we probably should.

Metropolis

Easily the most prominent depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to marking its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen preside over the towers as laborers toil below the surface on the machines that power the city. Affluent city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these massive class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground organizer who advocates for a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans builds a robot in her image, aiming to bring the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a machine created to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument 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 well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology relies on traditional manual labor, which seems like a most logical union of conservative contempt for “unskilled workers” and corporate zeal for an tech boom. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's simple to imagine a somewhat less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a resurgence to manufacturing. The trickier, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the have-nots is bridged with love; rather than with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the possibility