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The date 2025 might sound more futuristic. Perhaps it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 represents one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with each futuristic development – chiefly the widespread adoption of AI – appearing bleak, or perhaps more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed dehumanizing technology might operate a bit better?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm about this?

The answer, at least regarding science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally months ago) set in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of those warnings are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (when mankind is inevitably decimated, we will most likely take the primate species with us). Some of them are visionary; others just resemble poor green screen. But it's valuable to explore where various film-makers, from geniuses to grunts, thought we'd be situated by this time in the world's evolution. So let's take a look at some of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and determine if they contain any lessons to teach us.

Doom

Now, this isn't promising. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth can establish a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – in terms of narrative and concerning garish cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – doesn't really go down for another 20 years in the future, so even if we do discover a portal to Mars now, we might have a respite to avert true disaster. If we did uncover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would remain extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the portal wasn't something he funded himself, enabling him to assert messianic ownership for humanity's journey to the cosmos. That's before we even get to the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting mutations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a good test case for why, exactly we let Mars become a stretch-goal aspiration for humanity. Be it in the director's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely act as a symbol of hope. If anyone wishes to make that dubious red-planet property deal, maybe they should start with first making the fantasy version appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One 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 largely undepicted in the films themselves; the movies have turned into a alarm clock constantly running a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a whole bunch of MCU content that various wikis helpfully explain to be taking place in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so feel quite unmoored from our sense of time. But the poorer material is among the weakest the studio has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by this stuff, we're facing a whole lot of frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the related spin that in truth, this confusing mess unfolding in front of us is essential to future events. Even worse, in the real world that assertion will likely turn out to be correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, starting its chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s human population has run its course, and simultaneously boosted the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s only 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this virus propagates around the world and set in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual pandemic that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; astonishingly, we’re already half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously impacted by the still-spreading virus, was not annihilated, and our technology certainly hasn't been knocked out. Yet this bleakest of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a significant bummer in store, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines each, will inevitably result in warfare, no matter the efforts of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, even if those instincts are not held by the most. Currently, it seems difficult to argue with that, despite the fact that we probably should.

The Silent Classic

By far the best-known depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing celebrating its 100th anniversary. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where wealthy industrialists preside over the skyscrapers as workers work tirelessly underground on the equipment that keep everything running. Rich city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these massive social gaps when he falls for Maria, an subterranean activist who advocates for a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans creates a automaton in her image, hoping to bring the entire Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a machine created to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who wants to see them destroyed; it's a component flipped by reality in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology relies on old-fashioned human toil, which seems like a perfect fusion of rightwing disdain for “the working class” and business zeal for an AI bubble. It has not yet materialized, but it's easy 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 feat is the ending of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the have-nots is spanned with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the possibility