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The year 2025 could appear more futuristic. Perhaps it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with each science-fiction-style development – chiefly the broad integration of artificial intelligence – appearing dystopian, or possibly more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed anti-human technology might operate a bit better?) Didn't anyone warn us regarding this?

The answer, particularly concerning science fiction films from years ago (or sometimes recently) 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 inevitably ravaged, we will almost certainly bring down the primate species alongside us). Others of them are prescient; the rest just look like poor visual effects. Yet it remains worth examining where various directors, from geniuses to journeymen, thought we'd be situated by now in the world's development. Therefore, we shall take a look a selection of the movies that have been set in 2026 over the years and determine if they have anything to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *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 can set up a research facility. Now, the negative events – regarding narrative and concerning over-the-top film versions of a FPS video game – does not actually transpire for another 20 years later, so even if we find a Martian gateway now, we might have a respite to avert true disaster. Were we to uncover a portal to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would still be extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the portal wasn't something he funded himself, enabling him to assert messianic credit for mankind's journey to the cosmos. That's before we consider the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and subsequent mutations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for why, exactly we let Mars serve as a long-term hope for humanity. Be it in the director's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to serve as a beacon of optimism. If anyone wishes to make that dubious Martian property deal, maybe they should start with first making the fantasy version look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the strangest features of the current MCU is how to account for the various global cataclysms, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose events are mostly not shown in the movies themselves; the movies have turned into a clock radio perpetually set a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that various wikis helpfully explain to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so seem pretty unmoored from any concrete sense of time. But the bad stuff is among the weakest Marvel has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're facing a great deal of frustrating stagnation in 2026, along with the accompanying narrative that in truth, this nonsensical crap unfolding before our eyes is crucial to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the actual world that assertion will likely turn out to be accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, initiating its timeline approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s people has run its course, and also boosted the intelligence of primates, it’s merely 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this virus spreads globally and set in 2019, appears downright eerie in the wake of the actual pandemic that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; if you can believe it, we’re now half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly wounded by the ongoing virus, was not wiped out, and technological infrastructure definitely hasn't been disabled. But this bleakest of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a significant bummer in store, implying that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as each, will unavoidably lead to warfare, regardless of the work of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, even if those drives are not held by the majority. Right now, it seems difficult to argue with that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

Metropolis

Easily the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie close to marking its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where rich businessmen preside over the skyscrapers as laborers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that keep everything running. Affluent city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these massive social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground organizer who advocates for a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans creates a automaton in her image, aiming to bring the entire Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a robot designed to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but someone who desires to witness their downfall; it's one element inverted by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery relies on traditional manual labor, which appears as a perfect union of conservative contempt for “the working class” and corporate enthusiasm for an tech boom. It has not yet materialized, but it's simple to imagine a somewhat less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a return to industrial production. The trickier, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is spanned with love; not so much with concrete reforms. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the possibility