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The year 2025 could appear more futuristic. Perhaps it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies a leap forward, a moment where we find ourselves, with each futuristic development – chiefly the widespread adoption of AI – seeming dystopian, or perhaps more grim. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed dehumanizing technology might operate more effectively?) Didn't anyone warn us regarding this?

The answer, at least concerning our sci-fi movies made long ago (or sometimes recently) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of those warnings are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but specifically implausible (when mankind is ultimately ravaged, we will almost certainly take the ape population with us). Others of them are visionary; the rest just resemble poor green screen. But it's valuable to explore where different directors, from geniuses to journeymen, thought we'd be positioned by now in our planet's evolution. So let's take a look at some of the films that have been set in 2026 over the years and determine if they contain any lessons to teach us.

Doom

Now, this doesn't bode well. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can establish a research facility. Currently, the negative events – regarding plot and concerning garish film versions of a FPS video game – does not actually go down for two more decades later, so even if we do discover a portal to Mars this year, we could gain some time to avert true disaster. If we did uncover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would remain super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the discovery wasn't something he personally paid for, allowing him to assert messianic ownership for mankind's expansion into the stars. This precedes we consider the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent transformations into horrific creatures. (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 good test case for why, exactly we allow Mars serve as a stretch-goal aspiration for mankind. Be it in John Carpenter's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to act as a beacon of hope. Should someone wishes to close that dubious red-planet real estate sale, maybe they should start with first ensuring the fantasy version appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the goofiest quirks of the present MCU is the way it handles the multiple world-threatening cataclysms, including a half-decade leap whose events are largely not shown in the movies themselves; the films have turned into a clock radio perpetually running a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of MCU content that various wikis clarify to be set in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so feel quite detached from any concrete sense of time. However the poorer material is some of the worst 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 these examples, we're in for a whole lot of frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the related narrative that in truth, this nonsensical crap unfolding in front of us is crucial to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the real world that claim will probably prove accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set 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 around 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out the majority of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and simultaneously boosted the intelligence of primates, it’s only 2026, with further human indignities (and victories for apes) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this contagion spreads around the world and set in 2019, looks downright eerie in the aftermath of the real-world global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; if you can believe it, we’re already half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly impacted by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been wiped out, and our technology certainly has not been disabled. Yet this most pessimistic of the four modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a substantial bummer in store, suggesting that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably lead to violent conflict, regardless of the work of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, although those drives don't represent the most. Right now, it feels hard to dispute that, despite the fact that we probably should.

The Silent Classic

Easily the most prominent depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to marking its 100th anniversary. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where wealthy industrialists lord over the skyscrapers as laborers toil underground on the machines that power the city. Affluent city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive class divisions when he falls for Maria, an underground activist who preaches a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans builds a robot in her likeness, hoping to bring the entire Metropolis down in flames. Here, a robot designed to mimic a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who desires to see them destroyed; it's a component flipped by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery depends on old-fashioned human toil, which seems like 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 simple to picture a slightly more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a resurgence to industrial production. The more complex, less plausible accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the chasm 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 peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the possibility