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The year 2025 might sound more futuristic. Perhaps it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 represents a leap forward, a moment where we find ourselves, with every futuristic advancement – chiefly the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – seeming dystopian, or possibly more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology would actually function a bit better?) Did no one sound the alarm regarding this?

The response, at least regarding science fiction films from years ago (or sometimes months ago) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of those warnings are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (when mankind is inevitably ravaged, we will most likely bring down the ape population alongside us). Some of them are visionary; others just look like bad green screen. But it's valuable to explore where different directors, ranging from masters to grunts, believed we'd be situated by this time in our planet's evolution. Therefore, we shall take a look a selection of the films that have been set in 2026 over the years and see if they have anything to impart.

Doom

Well, this isn't promising. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to set up a research facility. Now, the negative events – in terms of plot and in terms of garish cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually transpire for two more decades in the future, so should we do discover a portal to Mars this year, we could gain some time to avert true disaster. Were we to discover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether Elon Musk would still be super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the discovery was not a thing 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 extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent transformations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is closer to 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 long-term aspiration for humanity. Be it in John Carpenter's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely act as a beacon of optimism. If anyone wants to close that questionable red-planet real estate sale, maybe they should start with first 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 world-threatening disasters, including a half-decade leap whose events are largely not shown in the films themselves; the movies have turned into a clock radio perpetually set a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. 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 underappreciated adventure *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so feel pretty unmoored from any concrete sense of time. However the poorer material is some of the worst Marvel has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're in for a whole lot of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, including the accompanying spin that in truth, this nonsensical crap happening in front of us is crucial to future events. Even worse, in the real world that claim will probably prove accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, starting its timeline approximately 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that devastates most of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s only 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this virus spreads globally and set around 2019, looks downright eerie in the wake of the real-world global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; astonishingly, we’re already half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though clearly impacted by the ongoing virus, was not wiped out, and our technology definitely has not been disabled. But this most pessimistic of the four modern *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a significant downer to offer, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines either, will unavoidably lead to warfare, regardless of the work of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, although those drives don't represent the most. Right now, it feels hard to dispute that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

Easily the best-known depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing celebrating its 100th anniversary. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen preside over the skyscrapers as workers toil underground on the machines that power the city. Rich surface resident Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these enormous social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground activist who advocates for a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans builds a automaton in her image, aiming to bring the entire Metropolis down in flames. Here, a robot designed to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who wants to witness their downfall; it's one element inverted by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology relies on traditional manual labor, which appears as a perfect fusion of rightwing contempt for “the working class” and business enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's easy to imagine a somewhat less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a return to manufacturing. The more complex, less plausible feat is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the poor 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