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The date 2025 could appear more futuristic. Maybe it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 represents one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style development – chiefly the widespread adoption of AI – appearing bleak, or perhaps more grim. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored anti-human technology would actually function more effectively?) Did no one sound the alarm about this?

The response, particularly concerning science fiction films from years ago (or sometimes months ago) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of these prophecies are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but specifically far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably decimated, we will most likely bring down the ape population with us). Some of them are visionary; the rest just look like poor visual effects. Yet it remains worth examining where different film-makers, from geniuses to grunts, believed we'd be positioned by now in the world's development. Therefore, we shall examine at some of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and determine if they contain any lessons to teach us.

Doom

Now, this doesn't bode well. 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 humanity discovers a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth can set up a scientific outpost. Currently, the negative events – regarding narrative and concerning over-the-top film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually go down for two more decades in the future, so should we find a Martian gateway this year, we could gain some time to avert true disaster. If we did discover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether Elon Musk would still be super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the discovery wasn't something he personally paid for, enabling him to claim savior-like ownership for humanity's expansion to the cosmos. That's before we consider the collection of Martian chromosomes and resulting transformations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for why, exactly we allow Mars serve as a stretch-goal aspiration for mankind. Whether in John Carpenter's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely serve as a beacon of optimism. If anyone wants to make that dubious Martian real estate sale, maybe they should start with first ensuring the fantasy version look good.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the goofiest quirks of the current MCU is how to account for the multiple global cataclysms, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose events are largely undepicted in the movies themselves; the movies have turned into a alarm clock constantly running a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of MCU content that fan sites clarify to be taking place 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 feel pretty unmoored from any concrete sense of time. But the bad stuff is among the weakest 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 this stuff, we're facing a whole lot of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the accompanying spin that actually, this confusing mess unfolding before our eyes is crucial to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the actual world that claim will likely prove accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the more distant 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 approximately 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that devastates most of Earth’s people has done its damage, and also boosted the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s only 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this virus spreads around the world and taking place in 2019, appears downright eerie in the wake of the real-world global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; astonishingly, we’re now half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously impacted by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been annihilated, and technological infrastructure definitely has not been disabled. Yet this most pessimistic of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a significant bummer to offer, implying that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as either, will unavoidably result in warfare, no matter the work of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, even if those instincts don't represent the most. Currently, it feels hard to dispute that, even though we probably should.

The Silent Classic

Easily the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing celebrating its centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen lord over the skyscrapers as laborers work tirelessly underground on the equipment that keep everything running. Affluent city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these massive social gaps when he falls for Maria, an subterranean organizer who preaches a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans builds a robot in her image, aiming to tear the entire Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a robot created to imitate 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 reality in a future that in other ways appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery relies on traditional manual labor, which seems like a perfect union of rightwing disdain for “the working class” and business zeal for an tech boom. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's simple to picture a slightly more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a return to industrial production. The trickier, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is bridged with love; rather than with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the chance