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The date 2025 might sound more futuristic. Perhaps it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies a leap forward, and it's where we find ourselves, with each science-fiction-style advancement – primarily the widespread adoption of AI – appearing bleak, or perhaps more grim. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed anti-human technology might operate more effectively?) Did no one sound the alarm about this?

The answer, particularly concerning our sci-fi movies from years ago (or occasionally months ago) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of those warnings are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably ravaged, we will almost certainly take the primate species alongside us). Others of them are visionary; others just look like poor visual effects. But it's valuable to explore where various film-makers, ranging from masters to journeymen, believed we'd be positioned by this time in our planet's development. Therefore, we shall examine 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 video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to set up a research facility. Now, the bad stuff – regarding plot and in terms of over-the-top film versions of a FPS video game – doesn't really transpire for two more decades in the future, so should we do discover a portal to Mars this year, we might have some time to avoid catastrophe. If we did discover a portal to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether Elon Musk would remain super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the portal was not a thing he funded himself, allowing him to assert messianic credit for humanity's expansion into the stars. That's before we even get to the collection of Martian chromosomes and subsequent mutations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for the reasons we allow Mars become a stretch-goal aspiration for humanity. Be it in the director's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely act as a beacon of optimism. If anyone wishes to close that dubious Martian property deal, maybe they ought to begin with first ensuring the fictional depiction look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the strangest features of the current MCU is the way it handles the various world-threatening cataclysms, including a half-decade leap whose events are largely undepicted in the films themselves; the movies have become like a alarm clock constantly set a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a whole bunch of MCU content that various wikis helpfully explain to be taking place 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 seem quite unmoored from any concrete sense of time. However the poorer material is among the weakest Marvel has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by this stuff, we're in for a whole lot of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the related narrative that in truth, this confusing mess unfolding before our eyes is crucial to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the real world that claim will probably turn out to be accurate.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the original 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 nearer the present, starting its timeline approximately 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that devastates most of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of apes, it’s only 2026, with additional human indignities (and victories for apes) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this virus spreads around the world and taking place in 2019, appears downright eerie in the aftermath of the actual global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; if you can believe it, we’re already half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly impacted by the ongoing virus, hasn't been annihilated, and technological infrastructure certainly hasn't been knocked out. Yet this most pessimistic of the four modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a significant downer in store, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines each, will unavoidably result in warfare, regardless of the work of the most well-meaning among us. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, even if those instincts don't represent the most. Right now, it feels difficult to dispute that, even though we probably should.

The Silent Classic

By far the best-known depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to marking its 100th anniversary. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists preside over the skyscrapers as laborers work tirelessly underground on the machines that keep everything running. Affluent surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these enormous social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground activist who preaches a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans builds a robot in her likeness, aiming to bring the whole of Metropolis down in flames. Here, a machine created to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who desires to witness their downfall; it's a component flipped by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology relies on old-fashioned manual labor, which seems like a most logical union of conservative contempt for “the working class” and corporate enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's easy to picture a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a resurgence to manufacturing. The more complex, less plausible feat is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the haves and the poor is spanned with compassion; rather than with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the chance