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The year 2025 could appear more futuristic. Maybe it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 represents one step beyond, a moment where we currently stand, with each science-fiction-style development – primarily the widespread adoption of AI – appearing dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored anti-human technology would actually function more effectively?) Did no one warn us regarding this?

The response, at least concerning science fiction films made long ago (or sometimes months ago) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of those warnings are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but in detail implausible (when mankind is inevitably ravaged, we will almost certainly bring down the ape population with us). Some of them are prescient; the rest just look like poor visual effects. But it's worth examining where various directors, from geniuses to journeymen, thought we'd be situated by this time in our planet's development. Therefore, we shall take a look a selection of the films that have been set in 2026 over the years and determine if they have anything to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this isn't promising. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth can set up a scientific outpost. Now, the bad stuff – regarding narrative and in terms of over-the-top film versions 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 might have a respite to avoid true disaster. If we did discover a portal to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would remain super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the discovery was not a thing he funded himself, allowing him to assert savior-like ownership for humanity's expansion to the cosmos. This precedes we even get to the collection of Martian chromosomes and subsequent mutations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a good test case for the reasons we allow Mars become a long-term aspiration for mankind. Be it in John Carpenter's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely serve as a symbol of hope. If anyone wants to make that dubious Martian real estate sale, maybe they ought to begin with first making the fantasy version appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the goofiest quirks of the present MCU is the way it handles the various global cataclysms, including a five-year time-jump whose events are mostly not shown in the movies themselves; the movies have turned into a clock radio constantly running a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a whole bunch of MCU content that fan sites clarify to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so feel pretty unmoored from any concrete sense of time. But the poorer material is some of the worst Marvel has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless 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 annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, including the accompanying narrative that actually, this nonsensical crap happening in front of us is essential to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that assertion will likely turn out to be accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is located in the more distant future of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, starting its chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a pathogen that devastates the majority of Earth’s human population has run its course, and also enhanced the intelligence of apes, it’s only 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this contagion propagates globally and taking place in 2019, looks downright eerie in the aftermath of the actual pandemic that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re already six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though clearly impacted by the still-spreading virus, was not wiped out, and our technology certainly has not been knocked out. But this most pessimistic of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a substantial downer in store, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will unavoidably result in violent conflict, regardless of the work of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, although those drives don't represent the most. Right now, it seems difficult to dispute that, even though we probably should.

Metropolis

Easily the best-known portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen preside over the skyscrapers as workers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that keep everything running. Rich surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these enormous 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 darker plans creates a automaton in her image, aiming to tear the entire Metropolis down in flames. Here, a machine created to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but someone who wants to see them destroyed; it's one element inverted by reality in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology depends on traditional human toil, which seems like a perfect fusion of conservative 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 version of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The more complex, less plausible accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is bridged with compassion; not so much with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the chance