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The year 2025 might sound more futuristic. Maybe it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with each futuristic advancement – primarily the widespread adoption of AI – appearing dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored anti-human technology might function a bit better?) Did no one sound the alarm regarding this?

The answer, at least concerning science fiction films made long ago (or occasionally recently) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of those warnings are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but specifically implausible (if humanity is inevitably ravaged, we will almost certainly take the primate species with us). Others of them are prescient; others just look like bad visual effects. Yet it remains valuable to explore where different film-makers, ranging from masters to journeymen, thought we'd be positioned by this time in our planet's evolution. So let's take a look at some of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they contain any lessons to impart.

Doom

Well, this isn't promising. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can set up a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – regarding plot and concerning over-the-top cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – doesn't really transpire for another 20 years later, so should we find a Martian gateway this year, we could gain a respite to avoid catastrophe. Were we to discover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would remain super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the discovery was not a thing he funded himself, allowing him to claim messianic ownership for humanity's journey into the stars. That's before we even get to the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting mutations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for why, exactly we allow Mars become a stretch-goal aspiration for humanity. Whether in John Carpenter's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to serve as a symbol of hope. If anyone wishes to close that dubious Martian real estate sale, maybe they should start with first ensuring the fictional depiction appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the strangest features of the present MCU is how to account for the multiple global cataclysms, encompassing a half-decade leap whose occurrences are mostly not shown in the movies themselves; the films have turned into a clock radio perpetually running a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a large assortment of Marvel stuff that various wikis clarify to be set in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, take place distant from Earth, and so feel pretty detached from any concrete sense of time. However the poorer material is among the weakest Marvel has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on this stuff, we're in for a great deal of annoying stagnation in 2026, along with the related narrative that in truth, this confusing mess unfolding in front of us is crucial to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the actual world that claim will probably turn out to be accurate.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most 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* begins 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 enhanced the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s merely 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this virus propagates around the world and taking place around 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual pandemic that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; astonishingly, we’re now six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly wounded by the still-spreading virus, was not wiped out, and technological infrastructure definitely hasn't been knocked out. Yet this most pessimistic of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a significant bummer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will inevitably result in violent conflict, regardless of the efforts of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, although those instincts are not held by the majority. Right now, it seems difficult to argue with that, despite the fact that we probably should.

The Silent Classic

By far the best-known portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing marking its 100th anniversary. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen lord over the towers as laborers toil below the surface on the machines that power the city. Rich city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean organizer who advocates for a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans builds a robot in her image, aiming to bring the entire Metropolis down in flames. Here, a robot created to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but someone who desires to see them destroyed; it's a component flipped by reality in a future that otherwise appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology depends on old-fashioned manual labor, which seems like a perfect fusion of conservative contempt for “the working class” and corporate enthusiasm for an tech boom. It has not yet come to pass, but it's simple to picture a somewhat more utilitarian version of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The more complex, harder-to-imagine feat is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the haves and the poor is spanned with compassion; not so much with concrete reforms. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the possibility