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The date 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 represents one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with each futuristic advancement – chiefly the broad integration of AI – appearing bleak, or possibly even worse. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed dehumanizing technology might function more effectively?) Didn't anyone warn us about this?

The response, at least concerning our sci-fi movies from years ago (or occasionally months ago) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of those warnings are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but in detail implausible (when mankind is inevitably ravaged, we will most likely bring down the primate species with us). Others of them are prescient; others just resemble poor visual effects. But it's valuable to explore where various film-makers, from geniuses to journeymen, believed we'd be situated by now in the world's development. So let's take a look at some of the films that have been set in 2026 over the years and see if they have anything to impart.

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 discovers a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth can set up a scientific outpost. Now, the bad stuff – in terms of plot and concerning garish cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really go down for two more decades later, so even if we find a Martian gateway now, we could gain a respite to avert catastrophe. If we did uncover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would still be super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the discovery was not a thing he personally paid for, enabling him to claim messianic credit for mankind's journey to the cosmos. This precedes we consider the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting transformations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for why, exactly we allow Mars become a stretch-goal hope for mankind. Be it in John Carpenter'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 beacon of hope. Should someone wishes to close that dubious Martian property deal, maybe they should start with at least making the fantasy version look good.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the goofiest quirks of the present MCU is the way it handles the multiple world-threatening disasters, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are mostly not shown in the movies themselves; the films have become like a alarm clock constantly set a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a whole bunch of MCU content that fan sites helpfully explain to be set in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated romp *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so feel quite 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 remote-meeting debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by this stuff, we're facing a great deal of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the related narrative that actually, this nonsensical crap unfolding before our eyes is essential to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the real world that claim will probably turn out to be correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the more distant future of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, starting its chronology around 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that knocks out most of Earth’s human population has run its course, and also enhanced the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s merely 2026, with additional human indignities (and victories for apes) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this contagion spreads globally and taking place in 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the real-world pandemic that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; astonishingly, we’re now half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously impacted by the ongoing virus, was not wiped out, and our technology definitely hasn't been disabled. Yet this bleakest of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a significant bummer in store, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably lead to warfare, no matter the efforts of the most well-meaning among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, even if those drives don't represent the most. Currently, it feels difficult to dispute that, even though we ought to try.

Metropolis

Easily the most prominent depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where rich businessmen preside over the towers as laborers toil underground on the machines that keep everything running. Affluent surface resident Freder, son of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these enormous class divisions when he falls for Maria, an underground organizer who preaches a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans creates a automaton in her image, hoping to bring the whole of Metropolis down in flames. Here, a machine created to mimic a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who desires to witness their downfall; it's a component inverted by reality in a future that in other ways appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology relies on traditional human toil, which seems like a perfect union of rightwing contempt for “unskilled workers” and corporate zeal for an AI bubble. It has not yet materialized, but it's simple to imagine a slightly less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The trickier, harder-to-imagine feat is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is spanned with compassion; rather than with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the chance