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The year 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies a leap forward, and it's where we currently stand, with each science-fiction-style advancement – primarily the broad integration of artificial intelligence – appearing dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored anti-human technology might function more effectively?) Didn't anyone warn us regarding this?

The answer, particularly regarding science fiction films from years ago (or sometimes recently) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably ravaged, we will most likely take the primate species alongside us). Some of them are visionary; the rest just resemble poor visual effects. But it's valuable to explore where various film-makers, from geniuses to grunts, believed we'd be situated by this time in our planet's evolution. So let's examine at some of the movies that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they have anything to teach us.

Doom

Now, this isn't promising. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to establish a research facility. Now, the bad stuff – regarding plot and in terms of over-the-top film versions of a FPS video game – does not actually go down for two more decades in the future, so even if we do discover a portal to Mars now, we might have a respite to avoid true disaster. If we did discover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether Elon Musk would still be extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the portal was not a thing he funded himself, enabling him to claim messianic credit for humanity's expansion to the cosmos. This precedes we consider the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent transformations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for the reasons we let Mars serve as a stretch-goal aspiration for mankind. Whether in the director's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely serve as a symbol of hope. Should someone wishes to make that dubious red-planet real estate sale, perhaps they should start with at least making the fantasy version appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the strangest features of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the various global cataclysms, including a half-decade leap whose events are mostly not shown in the movies themselves; the films have turned into a alarm clock constantly set a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's years. So there's a whole bunch 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*, take place far away from Earth, and so feel pretty unmoored from our sense of time. But the poorer material is some of the worst the studio has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on this stuff, we're in for a great deal of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the accompanying spin that in truth, this nonsensical crap happening before our eyes is crucial to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that assertion will probably prove correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, starting its chronology approximately 2016. Thus, when a virus that devastates the majority of Earth’s people has done its damage, and simultaneously boosted the intelligence of primates, it’s merely 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this contagion propagates globally and taking place in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual global health crisis that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; astonishingly, we’re already six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously impacted by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been wiped out, and technological infrastructure definitely hasn't been disabled. Yet this most pessimistic of the four modern *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a significant downer in store, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will inevitably result in warfare, no matter the work of the most well-meaning among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, although those drives don't represent the most. Right now, it seems difficult to argue with that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

Metropolis

By far the best-known portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie close to marking its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where rich businessmen preside over the skyscrapers as workers toil underground on the machines that power the city. Rich surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these massive class divisions when he falls for Maria, an subterranean organizer who preaches a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans creates a automaton in her image, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a robot designed to imitate 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 reality in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery relies on traditional human toil, which seems like a most logical union of conservative disdain for “the working class” and business enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's easy to picture a slightly less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a resurgence to manufacturing. The more complex, less plausible accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the haves and the poor is spanned with compassion; rather than with concrete reforms. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the possibility