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The year 2025 might sound more futuristic. Maybe it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 represents one step beyond, a moment where we currently stand, with each futuristic development – primarily the widespread adoption of AI – seeming dystopian, or possibly more grim. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed dehumanizing technology might function a bit better?) Did no one warn us about this?

The answer, at least concerning our sci-fi movies made long ago (or occasionally recently) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of those warnings are broadly applicable (global catastrophe) but specifically far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably ravaged, we will almost certainly bring down the primate species alongside us). Some of them are prescient; the rest just resemble bad visual effects. Yet it remains worth examining where different directors, ranging from masters to grunts, thought we'd be situated by this time in our planet's development. Therefore, we shall take a look at some of the films that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they have anything to impart.

Doom

Now, this doesn't bode well. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth can establish a scientific outpost. Currently, the negative events – in terms of narrative and concerning over-the-top cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – does not actually go down for two more decades later, so even if we do discover a portal to Mars now, we could gain a respite to avoid catastrophe. Were we to discover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether Elon Musk would still be extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the portal was not a thing he personally paid for, enabling him to assert savior-like ownership for humanity's expansion into the stars. This precedes we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting mutations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for the reasons we allow Mars become a long-term aspiration for humanity. Be it in John Carpenter's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely serve as a symbol of hope. If anyone wants to close that dubious red-planet real estate sale, perhaps they ought to begin with first making the fictional depiction appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the goofiest quirks of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the various global cataclysms, encompassing a half-decade leap whose events are mostly not shown in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a alarm clock constantly running a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that fan sites helpfully explain to be set in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so feel quite detached from any concrete sense of time. But the poorer material is some of the worst the studio has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're facing a whole lot of frustrating stagnation in 2026, along with the related spin that in truth, this confusing mess happening before our eyes is essential to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will probably prove accurate.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the more distant future of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, initiating its chronology 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 primates, it’s merely 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this virus propagates around the world and taking place around 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the real-world pandemic that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; astonishingly, we’re now six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously wounded by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been annihilated, and technological infrastructure certainly has not been knocked out. Yet this most pessimistic of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a substantial downer to offer, implying that human and/or ape nature, however one defines either, will unavoidably lead to violent conflict, regardless of the efforts of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, even if those drives are not held by the most. Right now, it feels difficult to dispute that, even though we ought to try.

Metropolis

By far the best-known depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing marking its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where rich businessmen preside over the skyscrapers as workers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that power the city. Affluent city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these massive social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean organizer who preaches a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans creates a automaton in her likeness, aiming to bring the entire Metropolis to ruin. Here, a robot created to imitate a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who desires to witness their downfall; it's a component flipped by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology depends on old-fashioned human toil, which appears as a most logical union of rightwing disdain for “the working class” and corporate zeal for an tech boom. It has not yet materialized, but it's easy to picture a slightly less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a return to manufacturing. The trickier, less plausible accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the have-nots is spanned with compassion; rather than with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the possibility