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The year 2025 might sound more futuristic. Maybe it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 represents one step beyond, and it's where we find ourselves, with every science-fiction-style advancement – chiefly the broad integration of AI – appearing dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed dehumanizing technology might function more effectively?) Did no one warn us about this?

The response, particularly concerning our sci-fi movies from years ago (or sometimes recently) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of those warnings are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but specifically far-fetched (when mankind is inevitably decimated, we will most likely bring down the ape population with us). Some of them are prescient; the rest just resemble poor visual effects. Yet it remains valuable to explore where various film-makers, from geniuses to grunts, thought we'd be situated by now in the world's development. So let's take a look at some of the movies that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they have anything to impart.

Doom

Now, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to set up a scientific outpost. Currently, the negative events – regarding plot and in terms of garish cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really go down for two more decades in the future, so even if we do discover a Martian gateway now, we might have some time to avert catastrophe. If we did uncover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would remain extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the portal was not a thing he personally paid for, enabling him to claim savior-like credit for humanity's expansion to the cosmos. That's before we even get to the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent transformations into horrific creatures. (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 good test case for why, exactly we allow Mars serve as a long-term aspiration for humanity. Be it in the director's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to act as a symbol of hope. If anyone wishes to make that dubious red-planet property deal, maybe they should start with at least making the fantasy version look good.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the goofiest quirks of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the multiple world-threatening disasters, including a half-decade leap whose occurrences are mostly undepicted in the films themselves; the movies have turned into a alarm clock perpetually set a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. So there's a whole bunch of MCU content that fan sites clarify to be set in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so seem quite detached from our sense of time. But the bad stuff is some of the worst Marvel has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by this stuff, we're facing a great deal of frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the related spin that in truth, this nonsensical crap happening in front of us is essential to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will likely turn out to be accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, starting its chronology approximately 2016. Thus, when a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and also boosted the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s only 2026, with additional human indignities (and victories for apes) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this contagion propagates globally and set around 2019, looks downright eerie in the aftermath of the real-world pandemic that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; astonishingly, we’re already half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously impacted by the ongoing virus, hasn't been wiped out, and our technology certainly has not been knocked out. But this most pessimistic of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a significant downer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines each, will inevitably lead to warfare, regardless of the work of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, although those drives don't represent the majority. Currently, it seems difficult to argue with that, despite the fact that we probably should.

The Silent Classic

Easily the best-known portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to marking its centennial. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where rich businessmen preside over the skyscrapers as workers toil underground on the equipment that keep everything running. Affluent city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these massive class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground activist who advocates for a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans builds a automaton in her likeness, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. Here, a robot designed to imitate a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who desires to witness their downfall; it's one element inverted by reality in a future that in other ways seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery depends on traditional manual labor, which appears as a most logical fusion of rightwing contempt for “the working class” and business enthusiasm for an tech boom. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's easy to picture a somewhat less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a return to industrial production. The trickier, less plausible accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the poor is bridged with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the chance