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The year 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies a leap forward, and it's where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style development – primarily the widespread adoption of AI – appearing bleak, or possibly even worse. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored anti-human technology might function more effectively?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm regarding this?

The answer, particularly regarding science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally months ago) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of those warnings are broadly applicable (global catastrophe) but specifically implausible (if humanity is inevitably ravaged, we will almost certainly bring down the ape population alongside us). Some of them are prescient; the rest just resemble poor visual effects. But it's worth examining where different directors, ranging from masters to grunts, believed we'd be positioned by this time in our planet's evolution. Therefore, we shall examine at some of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they contain any lessons to impart.

Doom

Well, this isn't promising. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to set up a scientific outpost. Now, the bad stuff – in terms of plot and in terms of over-the-top cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – does not actually go down for another 20 years later, so even if we do discover a Martian gateway now, we might have some time to avert catastrophe. Were we to discover a portal to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would still be super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the portal was not a thing he funded himself, enabling him to assert messianic ownership for humanity's expansion into the stars. That's before we consider the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting transformations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for the reasons we allow Mars become a long-term hope for mankind. Whether in the director's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely serve as a symbol of optimism. Should someone wants to close that questionable Martian property deal, maybe they should start with at least ensuring the fictional depiction look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the goofiest quirks of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the various global cataclysms, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose events are largely not shown in the films themselves; the films have become like a alarm clock perpetually set a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that various wikis clarify to be set in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, take place distant from Earth, and so feel pretty detached from any concrete sense of time. But the bad stuff 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*. Based on this stuff, we're in for a whole lot of frustrating stagnation in 2026, along with the related spin that in truth, this nonsensical crap unfolding before our eyes is crucial to future events. More troublingly, in the actual world that claim will likely turn out to be correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the further-flung future of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, initiating its chronology around 2016. So by the time a pathogen that devastates the majority of Earth’s people has run its course, and also enhanced the intelligence of apes, it’s merely 2026, with further human indignities (and victories for apes) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this virus propagates around the world and set in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the wake of the real-world pandemic that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; astonishingly, we’re now half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though obviously impacted by the ongoing virus, was not wiped out, and technological infrastructure definitely has not been knocked out. Yet this most pessimistic of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a significant downer to offer, implying that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably result in warfare, no matter the efforts of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, although those instincts don't represent the majority. Currently, it feels hard to argue with that, even though we probably should.

Metropolis

Easily the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing marking its centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where rich businessmen preside over the skyscrapers as workers toil underground on the equipment that keep everything running. Affluent surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these enormous class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground activist who preaches a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans creates a robot in her likeness, hoping to bring the entire Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a robot created to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but an entity who desires to see them destroyed; it's a component inverted by the modern world in a future that otherwise appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology depends on old-fashioned manual labor, which seems like a perfect fusion of conservative disdain for “the working class” and business zeal for an AI bubble. It has not yet come to pass, but it's easy to picture a somewhat more utilitarian version of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The trickier, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is spanned with love; not so much with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the possibility