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The date 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 represents a leap forward, and it's where we find ourselves, with each science-fiction-style development – chiefly the broad integration of AI – seeming bleak, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored anti-human technology might function more effectively?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm about this?

The answer, particularly regarding science fiction films made long ago (or occasionally recently) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of those warnings are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but specifically far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably decimated, we will most likely take the ape population with us). Others of them are visionary; the rest just resemble bad green screen. But it's worth examining where various directors, ranging from masters to journeymen, believed we'd be positioned by now in the world's development. Therefore, we shall examine a selection of the movies that have been set in 2026 over the years and determine if they contain any lessons to impart.

Doom

Now, this doesn't bode well. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can set up a research facility. Now, the negative events – in terms of narrative and in terms of garish cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually go down for another 20 years in the future, so should we do discover a Martian gateway now, we might have some time to avoid true disaster. If we did discover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether Elon Musk would still be super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the discovery was not a thing he personally paid for, enabling him to claim messianic ownership for humanity's journey into the stars. This precedes we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting mutations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for why, exactly we allow Mars become a long-term hope for mankind. Be it in John Carpenter's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to serve as a symbol of hope. If anyone wishes to close that questionable red-planet property deal, maybe they should start with first ensuring the fictional depiction appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the goofiest quirks of the present MCU is the way it handles the various global disasters, encompassing a half-decade leap whose occurrences are largely undepicted in the movies themselves; the films have become like a clock radio constantly set a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of Marvel stuff that fan sites helpfully explain to be taking place in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated adventure *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so seem quite unmoored from any concrete sense of time. However the bad stuff 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*. Based on this stuff, we're facing a great deal of annoying stagnation in 2026, including the accompanying narrative that actually, this confusing mess happening before our eyes is crucial to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the real world that assertion will likely turn out to be accurate.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, initiating its timeline approximately 2016. So by the time a pathogen that knocks out the majority of Earth’s people has done its damage, and simultaneously boosted the intelligence of primates, it’s only 2026, with further human indignities (and simian triumphs) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this contagion spreads globally and taking place around 2019, appears downright eerie in the aftermath of the real-world pandemic that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re already half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously impacted by the ongoing virus, was not wiped out, and technological infrastructure certainly hasn't been knocked out. Yet this most pessimistic of the four modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a substantial bummer in store, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines each, will inevitably lead to warfare, no matter the efforts of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, although those drives are not held by the majority. Right now, it feels difficult to dispute that, despite the fact that we probably should.

Metropolis

By far the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to marking its centennial. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen lord over the towers as workers work tirelessly underground on the equipment that power the city. Rich city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these massive social gaps when he falls for Maria, an underground organizer who advocates for a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans creates a automaton in her image, hoping to tear the entire Metropolis to ruin. Here, a machine designed to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but someone who wants to witness their downfall; it's a component flipped by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology depends on traditional manual labor, which appears as a perfect union of conservative disdain for “unskilled workers” and corporate enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It has not yet come to pass, but it's easy to imagine a slightly more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a resurgence to manufacturing. The trickier, less plausible feat is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is bridged with compassion; not so much with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the possibility