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The date 2025 could appear more futuristic. Maybe it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies a leap forward, a moment where we currently stand, with each science-fiction-style advancement – primarily the broad integration of artificial intelligence – seeming bleak, or perhaps more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored anti-human technology would actually operate a bit better?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm about this?

The answer, particularly concerning our sci-fi movies made long 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 ravaged, we will most likely bring down the ape population with us). Some of them are prescient; others just resemble bad visual effects. Yet it remains valuable to explore where various directors, ranging from masters to grunts, believed we'd be situated by now in our planet's evolution. Therefore, we shall examine a selection of the films that have been set in 2026 over the years and determine if they contain any lessons to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this doesn't bode well. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted 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 research facility. Now, the bad stuff – regarding narrative and in terms of garish cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually transpire for two more decades in the future, so should we do discover a portal to Mars now, we could gain some time to avoid true disaster. If we did uncover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether Elon Musk would still be super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the discovery wasn't something he funded himself, enabling him to assert savior-like ownership for mankind's journey to the cosmos. This precedes we even get to the collection of Martian chromosomes and subsequent transformations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is closer to 2046, not to be confused with the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for the reasons we let Mars become a stretch-goal aspiration for humanity. Be it in the director's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to serve as a symbol of hope. Should someone wants to make that questionable red-planet real estate sale, perhaps they should start with first making the fantasy version appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the strangest features of the current MCU is the way it handles the multiple global disasters, including a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are mostly not shown in the films themselves; the movies have become like a clock radio perpetually running a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a whole bunch of MCU content that various wikis clarify 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 feel quite detached from our sense of time. But the bad stuff is among the weakest 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 these examples, we're in for a great deal of frustrating stagnation in 2026, along with the related spin that actually, this confusing mess happening in front of us is crucial to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the real world that claim will probably prove correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series is located in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, initiating its chronology around 2016. So by the time a virus that devastates the majority of Earth’s people has done its damage, and also boosted the intelligence of primates, it’s only 2026, with additional human indignities (and victories for apes) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this virus propagates globally and set in 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual pandemic that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; astonishingly, we’re already six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously wounded by the ongoing virus, hasn't been annihilated, and technological infrastructure definitely hasn't been knocked out. Yet this most pessimistic of the four modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a substantial bummer to offer, suggesting that human and/or ape nature, however one defines either, will unavoidably lead to violent conflict, regardless of the work of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, although those drives don't represent the majority. Right now, it seems difficult to dispute that, despite the fact that we probably should.

Metropolis

By far the best-known depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where rich businessmen preside over the skyscrapers as laborers toil underground on the equipment that keep everything running. Rich city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these enormous social gaps when he falls for Maria, an subterranean organizer who advocates for a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans builds a automaton in her image, aiming to tear the entire Metropolis down in flames. Here, a machine designed to mimic 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 future that otherwise seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery depends on old-fashioned manual labor, which appears as a perfect union of conservative disdain for “the working class” and corporate enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's simple to imagine a slightly more utilitarian version of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a resurgence to industrial production. The more complex, less plausible accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the have-nots is spanned with compassion; rather than with concrete reforms. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the chance