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The date 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style development – primarily the broad integration of artificial intelligence – seeming bleak, or perhaps more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored anti-human technology might function more effectively?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm about this?

The response, at least regarding our sci-fi movies made long ago (or sometimes recently) set in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of these prophecies are broadly applicable (global catastrophe) but specifically far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably ravaged, we will most likely bring down the ape population with us). Some of them are visionary; others just look like bad green screen. Yet it remains valuable to explore where different directors, from geniuses to journeymen, believed we'd be situated by this time in the world's development. So let's take a look a selection of the movies that have been set in 2026 over the years and see if they have anything to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Currently, the bad stuff – in terms of plot and concerning garish film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually transpire for two more decades later, so should we find a portal to Mars now, we might have some time to avert catastrophe. Were we to discover a portal to an old 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 discovery wasn't something he funded himself, allowing him to claim messianic credit for mankind's expansion to the cosmos. This precedes we even get to the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent mutations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, not to be confused with the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for the reasons we allow Mars serve as a stretch-goal aspiration for humanity. Be it in the director's chintzy 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 rarely serve as a symbol of optimism. If anyone wishes to close that questionable red-planet property deal, maybe they should start with at least ensuring the fantasy version look good.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the goofiest quirks of the present MCU is how to account for the various world-threatening disasters, including a half-decade leap whose occurrences are largely undepicted in the movies themselves; the films have become like a alarm clock constantly running a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of MCU content that fan sites clarify to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so feel quite detached from our sense of time. But the poorer material is among the weakest Marvel has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce 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 in truth, this nonsensical crap unfolding in front of us is essential to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will probably turn out to be accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the more distant future of Earth, but the new trilogy that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, initiating its chronology around 2016. Thus, when a virus that knocks out the majority of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously boosted the intelligence of primates, it’s merely 2026, with additional human indignities (and simian triumphs) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this virus spreads around the world and set in 2019, appears downright eerie in the wake of the actual global health crisis that would dawn 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 impacted by the ongoing virus, hasn't been wiped out, and our technology certainly hasn't been knocked out. But this bleakest of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a significant downer to offer, suggesting that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably lead to violent conflict, regardless of the efforts of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, even if those drives don't represent the most. Right now, it feels difficult to argue with that, even though we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

Easily the best-known portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing marking its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where wealthy industrialists lord over the skyscrapers as workers work tirelessly underground on the equipment that power the city. Affluent surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these massive social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground activist who advocates for a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans builds a robot in her image, aiming to tear the entire Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a machine created to imitate a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who wants to see them destroyed; it's one element flipped by reality in a future that otherwise appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery depends on traditional human toil, which seems like a perfect union of rightwing contempt for “the working class” and business enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's easy to imagine a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a return to manufacturing. The more complex, less plausible feat is the ending of the film, where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is bridged 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 appears optimistic about the chance