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The date 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 represents a leap forward, a moment where we currently stand, with every futuristic advancement – chiefly the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – seeming bleak, or perhaps more grim. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed dehumanizing technology would actually function more effectively?) Didn't anyone warn us about this?

The answer, particularly concerning our sci-fi movies from years ago (or occasionally recently) set in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but specifically far-fetched (if humanity is ultimately decimated, we will almost certainly take the primate species with us). Others of them are visionary; others just look like bad green screen. But it's valuable to explore where various film-makers, ranging from masters to journeymen, thought we'd be positioned by now in the world's development. So let's examine a selection of the movies that have been set in 2026 over the years and determine if they have anything to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this doesn't bode well. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can establish a research facility. Currently, the negative events – regarding narrative and in terms of garish cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – doesn't really transpire for two more decades in the future, so should we do discover a Martian gateway now, we might have some time to avoid catastrophe. If we did discover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would remain super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the portal was not a thing he personally paid for, allowing him to assert messianic ownership for humanity's expansion to the cosmos. That's before we even get to the collection of Martian chromosomes and resulting mutations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for why, exactly we let Mars serve as a stretch-goal aspiration for humanity. Be it in John Carpenter'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 rarely act as a beacon of optimism. If anyone wishes to make that dubious red-planet property deal, maybe they ought to begin with first making the fictional depiction appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the strangest features of the present MCU is the way it handles the multiple global cataclysms, including a half-decade leap whose events are largely undepicted in the movies themselves; the films have turned into a clock radio constantly running a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch 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 underrated adventure *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so feel pretty unmoored from our sense of time. However the poorer material is among the weakest Marvel has ever produced: 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 whole lot of annoying stagnation in 2026, along with the related spin that actually, this confusing mess happening before our eyes is crucial to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the actual world that assertion will likely turn out to be correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series is located in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, initiating its timeline approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that devastates the majority of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and also enhanced the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s merely 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this virus spreads around the world and set in 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the wake of the real-world global health crisis that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re already half a decade 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 disabled. But this most pessimistic of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a significant bummer to offer, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines each, will inevitably lead to violent conflict, regardless of the efforts of the most well-meaning among us. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, even if those instincts don't represent the majority. Right now, it feels hard to dispute that, even though we probably should.

Metropolis

Easily the best-known depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to marking its centennial. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen lord over the towers as laborers toil below the surface on the equipment that power the city. Rich city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these massive class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground organizer who advocates for a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans builds a automaton in her likeness, aiming to tear the entire Metropolis down in flames. Here, a machine designed to mimic a human isn't a tool of the elite, but an entity who desires to witness their downfall; it's one element flipped by reality in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery relies on traditional human toil, which appears as a most logical union of rightwing disdain for “the working class” and business enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It has not yet come to pass, but it's easy to imagine a slightly less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a resurgence to industrial production. The more complex, less plausible feat is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the have-nots is bridged with love; not so much with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the chance