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The date 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies a leap forward, a moment where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style development – chiefly the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – appearing dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology might operate more effectively?) Did no one sound the alarm about this?

The response, particularly regarding our sci-fi movies from years ago (or occasionally months ago) set in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of these prophecies are broadly applicable (global catastrophe) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably decimated, we will almost certainly bring down the primate species alongside us). Some of them are visionary; others just resemble poor visual effects. Yet it remains worth examining where different directors, ranging from masters to journeymen, thought we'd be situated by now in the world's evolution. So let's take a look at some of the movies that have been set in 2026 over the years and determine if they contain any lessons to teach us.

Doom

Well, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can establish a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – regarding plot and concerning garish cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually go down for two more decades later, so even if we find a portal to Mars this year, we might have some time to avert catastrophe. Were we to uncover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would still be super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the discovery was not a thing he funded himself, allowing him to claim savior-like credit for humanity's journey into the stars. This precedes we consider the collection of Martian chromosomes 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 (at the very least) a useful example for the reasons we allow Mars become a stretch-goal aspiration for mankind. Whether in John Carpenter's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to serve as a symbol of optimism. Should someone wants to make that dubious Martian property deal, maybe they should start with at least ensuring the fictional depiction look good.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the strangest features of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the multiple global disasters, encompassing a half-decade leap whose occurrences are largely undepicted in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a alarm clock perpetually set a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a whole bunch of MCU content that various wikis helpfully explain to be set in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so feel pretty detached from any concrete sense of time. However the bad stuff is among the weakest Marvel has created: 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 frustrating stagnation in 2026, along with the accompanying narrative that in truth, this confusing mess unfolding before our eyes is essential to future events. Even worse, in the real world that claim will probably turn out to be accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, starting its timeline around 2016. Thus, when a virus that knocks out the majority of Earth’s human population has run its course, and also boosted the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s only 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this virus spreads globally and set around 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the wake of the actual global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; astonishingly, we’re already half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly wounded by the still-spreading virus, was not wiped out, and technological infrastructure definitely has not been knocked out. Yet this most pessimistic of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a significant downer to offer, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will unavoidably result in warfare, no matter the efforts of the most well-meaning among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, even if those drives don't represent the most. Currently, it feels difficult to argue with that, even though we ought to try.

Metropolis

Easily the most prominent depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing celebrating its centennial. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen lord over the skyscrapers as workers toil underground on the machines that power the city. Affluent city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these massive social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean organizer who preaches a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans builds a robot in her image, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis to ruin. Here, a machine designed to imitate a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who wants to witness their downfall; it's one element inverted by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery relies on traditional manual labor, which seems like a perfect union of conservative contempt for “unskilled workers” and corporate enthusiasm for an tech boom. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's simple to picture a slightly less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The trickier, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is bridged with love; not so much with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the possibility