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The year 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style advancement – chiefly the broad integration of AI – appearing bleak, or perhaps more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed dehumanizing technology would actually operate more effectively?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm about this?

The answer, at least concerning science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally months ago) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but specifically far-fetched (when mankind is ultimately decimated, we will almost certainly take the primate species with us). Others of them are prescient; others just look like bad green screen. But it's worth examining where various film-makers, from geniuses to journeymen, believed we'd be situated by now in our planet's development. Therefore, we shall take a look a selection of the films that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they contain any lessons to teach us.

Doom

Now, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to set up a scientific outpost. Now, the bad stuff – regarding plot and concerning garish cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really go down for another 20 years later, so should we do discover a Martian gateway this year, we could gain a respite to avoid true disaster. Were we to discover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether Elon Musk would still be extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the portal wasn't something he personally paid for, allowing him to assert savior-like credit for mankind's journey to the cosmos. That's before we even get to the collection of Martian chromosomes and resulting transformations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a good test case for why, exactly we allow Mars become a long-term aspiration for humanity. Whether in John Carpenter's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to serve as a beacon of optimism. Should someone wants to close that questionable red-planet real estate sale, perhaps they ought to begin with at least ensuring the fantasy version appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the goofiest quirks of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the various world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a half-decade leap whose events are largely not shown in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a clock radio constantly set a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's years. So there's a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that fan sites helpfully explain to be taking place 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 unmoored from any concrete sense of time. However the poorer material is some of the worst the studio has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're facing a whole lot of annoying stagnation in 2026, including the related spin that in truth, this nonsensical crap unfolding before our eyes is crucial to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will probably turn out to be correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the more distant future of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, initiating its timeline around 2016. So by the time a pathogen that knocks out most of Earth’s people has done its damage, and simultaneously enhanced the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s only 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this contagion spreads around the world and set in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual pandemic that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; astonishingly, we’re already half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though clearly impacted by the ongoing virus, was not annihilated, and technological infrastructure definitely has not been disabled. Yet this bleakest of the four modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a significant bummer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines each, will unavoidably lead to violent conflict, no matter the work of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, although those instincts don't represent the majority. Right now, it seems difficult to dispute that, even though we ought to try.

Metropolis

By far the most prominent depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing marking its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen preside over the towers as laborers toil underground on the machines that keep everything running. Rich city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these massive class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground organizer who advocates for a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans builds a robot in her likeness, aiming to bring the entire Metropolis to ruin. Here, a machine designed to mimic a human isn't a tool of the elite, but an entity who desires to witness their downfall; it's one element flipped by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery depends on old-fashioned manual labor, which seems like a perfect fusion of rightwing contempt for “unskilled workers” and business zeal for an tech boom. It has not yet come to pass, but it's easy to picture a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a return to industrial production. The trickier, less plausible accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the have-nots is bridged with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the chance