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The year 2025 might sound more futuristic. Perhaps it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies one step beyond, a moment where we currently stand, with every futuristic advancement – primarily the broad integration of artificial intelligence – seeming bleak, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed anti-human technology might function a bit better?) Did no one warn us about this?

The answer, at least 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 ultimately ravaged, we will most likely take the primate species with us). Some of them are prescient; others just look like poor green screen. But it's valuable to explore where different film-makers, ranging from masters to journeymen, believed we'd be positioned by now in our planet's evolution. So let's take a look a selection of the films that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and determine if they have anything to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this doesn't bode well. 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 inhabitants of Earth are able to establish a research facility. Currently, the negative events – 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 even if we do discover a Martian gateway this year, we could gain a respite to avert catastrophe. If we did uncover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether Elon Musk would remain super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the discovery was not a thing he funded himself, enabling him to claim savior-like ownership for humanity's journey into the stars. This precedes we even get to the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and resulting transformations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for the reasons we allow Mars become a stretch-goal hope for mankind. Be it in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to serve as a symbol of hope. Should someone wishes to make that dubious Martian property deal, perhaps they should start with first ensuring the fantasy version appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the goofiest quirks of the present MCU is the way it handles the multiple world-threatening cataclysms, including a five-year time-jump whose events are largely undepicted in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a alarm clock constantly running a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a whole bunch of MCU content that fan sites clarify to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, take place distant from Earth, and so seem pretty detached from our sense of time. But the poorer material is some of the worst Marvel has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by this stuff, we're facing a great deal of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the related narrative that in truth, this nonsensical crap happening in front of us is essential to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the actual world that assertion will likely turn out to be correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, starting its chronology approximately 2016. Thus, when a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s merely 2026, with additional human indignities (and simian triumphs) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this contagion spreads around the world and set around 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual pandemic that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re now six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly wounded by the ongoing virus, was not annihilated, and our technology certainly hasn't been disabled. But this bleakest of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a significant downer in store, suggesting that human and/or ape nature, however one defines either, will inevitably result in violent conflict, no matter the efforts of the best-intentioned among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, although those drives don't represent the most. Currently, it feels difficult to dispute that, even though we probably should.

The Silent Classic

By far the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing celebrating its centennial. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists preside over the towers as workers toil below the surface on the equipment that power the city. Rich city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground activist who preaches a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans creates a automaton in her likeness, hoping to bring the entire Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a machine designed to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but an entity who wants to witness their downfall; it's a component flipped by reality in a future that otherwise appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery relies on old-fashioned manual labor, which seems like a most logical union of conservative contempt for “unskilled workers” and business enthusiasm for an tech boom. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's simple to imagine a slightly more utilitarian version of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a return to manufacturing. The more complex, less plausible accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the poor is bridged with compassion; not so much with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the possibility