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The year 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 represents one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with each futuristic development – primarily the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – seeming bleak, or perhaps even worse. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed anti-human technology might operate a bit better?) Did no one sound the alarm regarding this?

The answer, at least regarding science fiction films from years ago (or sometimes months ago) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of those warnings are broadly applicable (global catastrophe) but specifically far-fetched (when mankind is ultimately decimated, we will almost certainly bring down the ape population with us). Some of them are visionary; others just look like poor visual effects. But it's worth examining where different directors, from geniuses to grunts, believed we'd be positioned by this time in our planet's evolution. Therefore, we shall examine a selection of the films that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they contain any lessons to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this isn't promising. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to set up a research facility. Now, the negative events – in terms of plot and concerning over-the-top cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – does not actually go down for another 20 years in the future, so even if we do discover a portal to Mars now, we might have some time to avert true disaster. If we did uncover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether Elon Musk would remain extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the discovery was not a thing he funded himself, allowing him to assert savior-like ownership for humanity's journey into the stars. That's before we even get to the collection of Martian chromosomes and subsequent transformations into monstrous beings. (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. Be it in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded 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 hope. If anyone wishes to close that dubious red-planet real estate sale, maybe they ought to begin with at least making the fantasy version look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the strangest features of the present MCU is how to account for the multiple global cataclysms, including a half-decade leap whose events are mostly not shown in the movies themselves; the movies have turned into a clock radio constantly set a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that various wikis helpfully explain 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 feel quite unmoored from any concrete sense of time. But the bad stuff is some of the worst the studio has ever produced: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on this stuff, we're in for a great deal of annoying stagnation in 2026, including the accompanying narrative that actually, this confusing mess happening in front of us is essential to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the real world that assertion will likely turn out to be accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* series 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* begins closer to home, initiating its chronology approximately 2016. Thus, when a virus that devastates most of Earth’s human population has run its course, and also enhanced the intelligence of primates, it’s merely 2026, with additional human indignities (and victories for apes) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this contagion propagates globally and taking place in 2019, appears downright eerie in the wake of the real-world pandemic that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; astonishingly, we’re now half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously impacted by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been wiped out, and our technology certainly hasn't been knocked out. But this bleakest of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a substantial downer to offer, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will inevitably lead to violent conflict, no matter the work of the most well-meaning among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, although those drives don't represent the most. 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 close to celebrating its centennial. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen preside over the towers as workers work tirelessly below the surface on the equipment that keep everything running. Affluent surface resident Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these enormous social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean activist who preaches a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans creates a automaton in her likeness, hoping to bring the whole of Metropolis to ruin. Here, a machine designed to imitate a human isn't a tool of the elite, but someone who desires to see them destroyed; it's one element inverted by reality in a future that otherwise seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery depends on traditional human toil, which appears as a perfect union of rightwing disdain for “the working class” and corporate zeal for an tech boom. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's simple to picture a somewhat more utilitarian version of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The trickier, harder-to-imagine feat is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy 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 peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the possibility