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The year 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 represents one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with each futuristic development – primarily the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – appearing dystopian, or possibly more grim. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed dehumanizing technology would actually function a bit better?) Did no one sound the alarm about this?

The response, at least regarding science fiction films made long ago (or occasionally months ago) set in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of those warnings are broadly applicable (global catastrophe) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is ultimately ravaged, we will almost certainly bring down the primate species with us). Some of them are visionary; others just look like bad visual effects. But it's worth examining where various film-makers, ranging from masters to journeymen, believed we'd be situated by this time in our planet's evolution. So let's examine a selection of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they have anything to teach us.

Doom

Well, this isn't promising. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to set up a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – regarding plot and in terms of garish cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – does not actually transpire for another 20 years in the future, so even if we do discover a portal to Mars now, we might have some time to avoid true disaster. Were we to discover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether Elon Musk would remain super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the discovery was not a thing he personally paid for, allowing him to claim messianic ownership for humanity's expansion into the stars. This precedes we consider the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent mutations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for why, exactly we let Mars become a long-term hope for mankind. Be it in John Carpenter's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to serve as a symbol of hope. Should someone wishes to close that dubious red-planet property deal, maybe they ought to begin with at least ensuring the fictional depiction appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the goofiest quirks of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the multiple global cataclysms, including a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are largely undepicted in the movies themselves; the films have turned into a clock radio constantly running a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a large assortment 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 adventure *The Marvels*, take place distant from Earth, and so seem pretty unmoored from our sense of time. But the bad stuff is among the weakest Marvel has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're in for a whole lot of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, including the accompanying narrative that actually, this confusing mess unfolding in front of us is crucial to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the real world that assertion will likely prove accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is located in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, starting its chronology approximately 2016. Thus, when a virus that devastates the majority of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and simultaneously boosted the intelligence of apes, it’s only 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this virus propagates around the world and taking place around 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the wake of the real-world global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re now half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly impacted by the still-spreading virus, was not wiped out, and our technology certainly hasn't been disabled. But this most pessimistic of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a significant downer to offer, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will inevitably result in warfare, regardless of the work of the best-intentioned among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, although those instincts are not held by the most. Right now, it feels difficult to dispute that, even though we probably should.

Metropolis

Easily the best-known depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to marking its centennial. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen preside over the towers as laborers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that power the city. Rich city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive social gaps when he falls for Maria, an underground activist who advocates for a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans creates a robot in her likeness, aiming to bring the entire Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a robot created to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but an entity who wants to see them destroyed; it's a component inverted by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology relies on traditional human toil, which seems like a perfect fusion of conservative contempt for “the working class” and corporate enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's easy to imagine a somewhat less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The more complex, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the have-nots is bridged with love; not so much with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the possibility