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The year 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies a leap forward, and it's where we currently stand, with each science-fiction-style development – primarily the broad integration of AI – appearing bleak, or possibly even worse. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed dehumanizing technology would actually operate a bit better?) Did no one warn us regarding this?

The response, at least concerning our sci-fi movies from years ago (or occasionally months ago) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of those warnings are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but specifically far-fetched (when mankind is inevitably ravaged, we will most likely bring down the ape population with us). Some of them are visionary; the rest just look like poor green screen. Yet it remains valuable to explore where various directors, ranging from masters to journeymen, thought we'd be positioned by this time in the world's development. Therefore, we shall take a look at some of the films that have been set in 2026 over the years and determine if they have anything to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this isn't promising. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth can establish a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – in terms of plot and concerning over-the-top film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really transpire for another 20 years in the future, so should we find a Martian gateway now, we could gain some time to avert catastrophe. Were we to discover a portal to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would remain extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the portal was not a thing he personally paid for, enabling him to claim savior-like ownership for mankind's journey into the stars. This precedes we even get to the collection of Martian chromosomes and resulting transformations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a good test case for why, exactly we let Mars serve as a stretch-goal aspiration for mankind. Whether in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely serve as a symbol of hope. Should someone wants to make that dubious red-planet property deal, perhaps they ought to begin with at least ensuring the fantasy version appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the strangest features of the current MCU is the way it handles the multiple global disasters, encompassing a half-decade leap whose events are largely not shown in the films themselves; the movies have become like a clock radio constantly running a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's years. So there's a large assortment of MCU content that various wikis clarify to be taking place in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so seem quite detached from our sense of time. But the poorer material is among the weakest the studio 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 frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the accompanying narrative that in truth, this nonsensical crap unfolding in front of us is essential to future events. More troublingly, in the real world that claim will likely prove correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, starting its timeline approximately 2016. So by the time a pathogen that devastates the majority of Earth’s people has done its damage, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of apes, it’s merely 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this contagion spreads around the world and set around 2019, appears downright eerie in the aftermath of the real-world global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; astonishingly, we’re already six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though obviously impacted by the ongoing virus, was not wiped out, and our technology certainly hasn't been disabled. Yet this most pessimistic of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a significant downer in store, implying that human and/or ape nature, however one defines either, will unavoidably result in violent conflict, regardless of the work of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, although those instincts are not held by the most. Currently, it feels difficult to argue with that, even though we probably should.

The Silent Classic

By far the best-known portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing marking its 100th anniversary. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where rich businessmen preside over the skyscrapers as workers toil underground on the equipment that power the city. Rich city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these massive class divisions when he falls for 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 whole of Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a robot designed to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but someone who desires to see them destroyed; it's one element inverted by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology relies on old-fashioned manual labor, which appears as a perfect fusion of rightwing contempt for “the working class” and business zeal for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's easy to picture a slightly less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a return to industrial production. The more complex, less plausible accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is spanned with compassion; not so much with concrete reforms. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the possibility