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The date 2025 could appear more futuristic. Perhaps it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies a leap forward, a moment where we find ourselves, with every futuristic advancement – primarily the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – seeming dystopian, or perhaps more grim. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored anti-human technology might operate more effectively?) Did no one warn us about this?

The response, at least regarding our sci-fi movies from years ago (or sometimes months ago) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of these prophecies are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but in detail implausible (when mankind is inevitably ravaged, we will most likely bring down the primate species with us). Others of them are visionary; others just look like poor visual effects. Yet it remains valuable to explore where different film-makers, from geniuses to grunts, believed we'd be situated by this time in our planet's evolution. Therefore, we shall examine at some of the films that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they have anything to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, 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 mankind finds a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – regarding narrative and concerning garish film versions of a FPS video game – does not actually transpire for another 20 years later, so should we find a Martian gateway now, we might have some time to avert true disaster. Were we to uncover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would remain super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the discovery wasn't something he personally paid for, allowing him to assert messianic credit for mankind's expansion into the stars. That's before we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent mutations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for the reasons we let Mars become a stretch-goal aspiration for humanity. Be it in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely act as a symbol of optimism. Should someone wishes to make that questionable red-planet property deal, perhaps they should start with first making the fictional depiction appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the goofiest quirks of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the multiple global cataclysms, including a half-decade leap whose occurrences are largely not shown in the films themselves; the movies have turned into a clock radio constantly running a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. So there's a large assortment 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 distant from Earth, and so seem quite detached from any concrete sense of time. But the poorer material is some of the worst the studio has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by this stuff, we're in for a whole lot of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, including the accompanying narrative that actually, this confusing mess unfolding before our eyes is crucial to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the actual world that claim will probably prove accurate.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the further-flung future of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, starting its chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out the majority of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously boosted the intelligence of apes, 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 in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the wake of the actual pandemic that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; if you can believe it, we’re already half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though obviously impacted by the ongoing virus, was not annihilated, and technological infrastructure definitely hasn't been knocked out. But this bleakest of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a significant bummer in store, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will unavoidably result in warfare, regardless of the work of the best-intentioned among us. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, even if those instincts are not held by the majority. Currently, it seems hard to dispute that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

Metropolis

By far the best-known portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists preside over the skyscrapers as workers work tirelessly underground on the equipment that keep everything running. Affluent surface resident Freder, son of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these massive class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground organizer who preaches a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans creates a robot in her image, hoping to bring the whole of Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a machine designed to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but someone who wants to witness their downfall; it's one element flipped by reality in a future that in other ways seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology relies on old-fashioned manual labor, which appears as a perfect fusion of conservative disdain for “unskilled workers” and corporate zeal for an tech boom. It has not yet come to pass, but it's simple to picture a slightly less stylish-looking 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 chasm between the haves and the have-nots is bridged with compassion; rather than with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the chance