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The year 2025 might sound more futuristic. Maybe it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 represents a leap forward, a moment where we find ourselves, with each futuristic development – primarily the widespread adoption of AI – appearing dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed dehumanizing technology would actually operate more effectively?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm regarding this?

The response, particularly regarding science fiction films made long ago (or occasionally months ago) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of these prophecies are broadly applicable (global catastrophe) but in detail implausible (when mankind is ultimately ravaged, we will most likely bring down the ape population alongside us). Some of them are prescient; others just resemble bad green screen. But it's valuable to explore where different directors, from geniuses to journeymen, thought we'd be positioned by now in the world's development. So let's examine a selection of the movies that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they contain any lessons to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this doesn't bode well. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – regarding plot and in terms of over-the-top film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really transpire for two more decades in the future, so should we find a portal to Mars now, we could gain a respite to avert catastrophe. Were we to uncover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would remain extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the portal was not a thing he funded himself, allowing him to claim messianic credit for mankind's expansion into the stars. That's before we even get to the collection of Martian chromosomes and subsequent transformations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for the reasons we allow Mars serve as a long-term aspiration for humanity. Be it in the director's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to serve as a symbol of optimism. If anyone wishes to make that questionable red-planet property deal, perhaps they should start with at least making the fictional depiction appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the goofiest quirks of the present MCU is the way it handles the multiple global cataclysms, including a five-year time-jump whose events are mostly undepicted in the movies themselves; the movies have turned into a alarm clock perpetually set a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of MCU content that fan sites clarify to be taking place in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so seem quite unmoored from any concrete sense of time. However the bad stuff is among the weakest Marvel has ever produced: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're in for a great deal of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the accompanying narrative that in truth, this confusing mess happening before our eyes is essential to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the real world that assertion will likely prove accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series 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, starting its timeline around 2016. So by the time a pathogen that devastates most of Earth’s people has run its course, and also enhanced the intelligence of apes, it’s merely 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this contagion spreads globally and taking place around 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; astonishingly, we’re already half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though clearly impacted by the ongoing virus, hasn't been annihilated, and technological infrastructure definitely has not been knocked out. But this bleakest of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a substantial downer to offer, implying that human and/or ape nature, however one defines either, will inevitably result in violent conflict, no matter the work of the best-intentioned among us. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, although those drives are not held by the majority. Right now, it feels hard to dispute that, despite the fact that we probably should.

The Silent Classic

Easily the most prominent depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists preside over the skyscrapers as workers work tirelessly underground on the equipment that keep everything running. Rich surface resident Freder, son of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these massive social gaps when he falls for Maria, an subterranean activist who preaches a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans builds a robot in her image, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a machine designed to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but an entity who wants to witness their downfall; it's a component inverted by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology relies on old-fashioned manual labor, which seems like a most logical fusion of conservative contempt for “unskilled workers” and business enthusiasm for an tech boom. It has not yet come to pass, but it's simple to imagine a somewhat less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a return to manufacturing. The more complex, less plausible accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the poor is spanned with love; rather than with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the possibility