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The year 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies one step beyond, a moment where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style advancement – chiefly the broad integration of artificial intelligence – seeming dystopian, or perhaps more grim. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed dehumanizing technology might function a bit better?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm regarding this?

The response, particularly concerning science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally recently) set in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of those warnings are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but specifically far-fetched (when mankind is inevitably ravaged, we will almost certainly take the ape population with us). Others of them are visionary; others just resemble bad visual effects. Yet it remains valuable to explore where various directors, from geniuses to grunts, thought we'd be situated by now in our planet's evolution. Therefore, we shall take a look a selection of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and see if they have anything to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this doesn't bode well. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can establish a scientific outpost. Now, the bad stuff – in terms of plot and concerning garish film versions of a FPS video game – doesn't really transpire for two more decades in the future, so even if we find a portal to Mars this year, we might have a respite to avert catastrophe. If we did discover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would remain extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the portal wasn't something he personally paid for, allowing him to assert messianic credit for mankind's journey to the cosmos. That's before we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent transformations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for the reasons we allow Mars serve as a stretch-goal aspiration for humanity. Whether in the director's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely serve as a symbol of optimism. If anyone wants to make that questionable red-planet property deal, perhaps they ought to begin with first making the fictional depiction look good.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the goofiest quirks of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the various global cataclysms, encompassing a half-decade leap whose events are largely not shown in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a clock radio constantly set a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that various wikis helpfully explain to be taking place in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so seem pretty unmoored from our sense of time. However the poorer material is among the weakest Marvel has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by this stuff, we're facing a whole lot of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the related narrative that in truth, this nonsensical crap unfolding before our eyes is essential to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will likely prove accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the further-flung future of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, starting its chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that devastates the majority of Earth’s human population has run its course, and also enhanced the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s only 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this virus propagates globally and taking place around 2019, looks downright eerie in the aftermath of the actual pandemic that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; astonishingly, we’re already half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly wounded by the ongoing virus, hasn't been annihilated, and our technology certainly has not been disabled. But this bleakest of the four modern *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a significant downer to offer, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably result in violent conflict, regardless of the work of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, although those drives don't represent the majority. Currently, it seems hard to argue with that, despite the fact that we probably should.

The Silent Classic

By far the best-known depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to celebrating its 100th anniversary. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen preside over the towers as laborers work tirelessly below the surface on the equipment that keep everything running. Rich surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these enormous social gaps when he falls for Maria, an underground organizer who preaches a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans builds a automaton in her image, aiming to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a machine designed to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but an entity who wants to see them destroyed; it's one element inverted by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery relies on old-fashioned manual labor, which appears as a perfect union of rightwing contempt for “the working class” and business zeal for an tech boom. It has not yet materialized, but it's easy to picture a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a resurgence to manufacturing. The trickier, less plausible accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is bridged with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the chance