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The year 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 represents one step beyond, a moment where we currently stand, with each futuristic advancement – chiefly the broad integration of AI – seeming dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored anti-human technology might function more effectively?) Did no one sound the alarm regarding this?

The response, at least concerning our sci-fi movies from years ago (or occasionally months ago) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of these prophecies are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but in detail implausible (when mankind is inevitably ravaged, we will almost certainly bring down the ape population alongside us). Some of them are visionary; the rest just resemble poor green screen. Yet it remains worth examining where different film-makers, ranging from masters to journeymen, thought we'd be situated by this time in our planet's development. So let's take a look at some of the films that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they contain any lessons to impart.

Doom

Now, this isn't promising. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can set up a research facility. Now, the bad stuff – regarding narrative and in terms of garish cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – does not actually go down for another 20 years in the future, so should we do discover a portal to Mars now, we could gain a respite to avert catastrophe. Were we to discover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would still be super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the discovery wasn't something he funded himself, enabling him to claim savior-like ownership for mankind's expansion into the stars. This precedes we even get to the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting 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 stretch-goal hope for mankind. Be it in John Carpenter's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to act as a symbol of hope. Should someone wishes to make that questionable Martian real estate sale, perhaps they ought to begin with first ensuring the fantasy version look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the goofiest quirks of the present MCU is how to account for the various world-threatening disasters, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are largely not shown in the movies themselves; the films have turned into a alarm clock constantly running a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's years. So there's a whole bunch of MCU content that fan sites clarify to be set in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated romp *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so seem quite detached from our sense of time. However the poorer material is some of the worst Marvel has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by this stuff, we're facing a whole lot of annoying stagnation in 2026, along with the accompanying spin that actually, this nonsensical crap happening before our eyes is essential to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the real world that assertion will probably prove correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the more distant future of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, initiating its timeline around 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and also enhanced the intelligence of apes, it’s only 2026, with further 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 profoundly unsettling in the wake of the real-world global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; if you can believe it, we’re already six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though clearly wounded by the ongoing virus, was not wiped out, and our technology certainly has not been knocked out. But this bleakest of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a substantial downer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines either, will inevitably result in warfare, no matter the efforts of the best-intentioned among us. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, even if those instincts don't represent the most. Currently, it feels difficult to argue with that, despite the fact that we probably should.

The Silent Classic

Easily the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie close to marking its centennial. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where rich businessmen lord over the towers as workers work tirelessly underground on the equipment that keep everything running. Rich city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these enormous social gaps when he falls for Maria, an underground organizer who preaches a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans builds a automaton in her image, aiming to tear the whole of Metropolis to ruin. Here, a machine created to mimic a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who wants to witness their downfall; it's one element flipped by the modern world in a future that otherwise appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery relies on traditional human toil, which appears as a perfect fusion of conservative disdain for “the working class” and business enthusiasm for an tech boom. It has not yet materialized, but it's easy to picture a somewhat less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a return to industrial production. The more complex, less plausible accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the haves and the poor is bridged with love; not so much with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the possibility