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The date 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 represents a leap forward, and it's where we currently stand, with each futuristic advancement – primarily the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – seeming bleak, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed dehumanizing technology would actually function a bit better?) Didn't anyone warn us regarding this?

The answer, particularly concerning science fiction films made long ago (or occasionally recently) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of these prophecies are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably ravaged, we will almost certainly bring down the ape population alongside us). Some of them are prescient; others just resemble bad green screen. Yet it remains valuable to explore where different film-makers, ranging from masters to journeymen, thought we'd be situated by this time in our planet's development. So let's take a look at some of the films that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they contain any lessons to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this isn't promising. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth can establish a scientific outpost. Currently, the bad stuff – regarding plot and in terms of garish film versions of a FPS video game – doesn't really transpire for two more decades later, so even if we find a Martian gateway now, we could gain a respite to avoid true disaster. Were we to discover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would still be extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the portal wasn't something he personally paid for, allowing him to claim savior-like credit for humanity's expansion to the cosmos. This precedes we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting mutations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, not to be confused with the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for why, exactly we let Mars become a long-term hope for mankind. Whether in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to serve as a symbol of optimism. Should someone wants to close that questionable Martian property deal, maybe they should start with first ensuring the fictional depiction look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the strangest features of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the multiple global cataclysms, including a five-year time-jump whose events are largely undepicted in the films themselves; the films have become like a alarm clock constantly running a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. So there's a large assortment of Marvel stuff that fan sites clarify to be taking place in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so feel quite unmoored from our sense of time. But the bad stuff 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*. Based on this stuff, we're in for a great deal of annoying stagnation in 2026, including the accompanying spin that in truth, this nonsensical crap unfolding before our eyes is crucial to future events. Even worse, in the real world that claim will likely prove correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle 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 nearer the present, initiating its timeline approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that devastates the majority of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of primates, it’s merely 2026, with further human indignities (and simian triumphs) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this contagion spreads around the world and taking place around 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual global health crisis that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; astonishingly, we’re now six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly wounded by the ongoing virus, hasn't been wiped out, and our technology definitely hasn't been knocked out. But this most pessimistic of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a significant bummer in store, suggesting that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably result in warfare, no matter the work of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, although those instincts are not held by the most. Right now, it feels difficult to dispute that, despite the fact that we probably should.

The Silent Classic

Easily the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing marking its centennial. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists lord over the towers as laborers work tirelessly below the surface on the equipment that power the city. 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 underground activist who preaches a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans creates a robot in her image, aiming to tear the entire Metropolis to ruin. Here, a machine created to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but someone who desires to witness their downfall; it's a component inverted by the modern world in a future that otherwise seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology depends on traditional human toil, which appears as a most logical fusion of rightwing disdain for “unskilled workers” and business enthusiasm for an tech boom. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's simple to imagine a somewhat less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a return to manufacturing. The trickier, harder-to-imagine feat is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is spanned with compassion; rather than with concrete reforms. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the chance