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The year 2025 could appear more futuristic. Perhaps it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies a leap forward, a moment where we find ourselves, with each futuristic advancement – primarily the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – seeming dystopian, or possibly even worse. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed anti-human technology would actually operate more effectively?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm about this?

The answer, particularly concerning our sci-fi movies made long ago (or sometimes recently) set in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of those warnings are broadly applicable (global catastrophe) but specifically far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably decimated, we will almost certainly bring down the ape population alongside us). Some of them are visionary; the rest just look like poor green screen. But it's valuable to explore where different film-makers, ranging from masters to journeymen, believed we'd be situated by this time in the world's development. Therefore, we shall examine at some of the movies that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they contain any lessons to impart.

Doom

Well, this isn't promising. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth can set up a research facility. Currently, the bad stuff – in terms of plot and in terms of garish film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually transpire for two more decades later, so even if we find a portal to Mars this year, we might have some time to avert catastrophe. Were we to discover a portal to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would still be extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the portal was not a thing he personally paid for, allowing him to assert messianic credit for mankind's expansion into the stars. That's before we even get to the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting mutations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for why, exactly we let Mars become a stretch-goal aspiration for mankind. Be it in the director's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely serve as a symbol of optimism. Should someone wishes to make that questionable red-planet real estate sale, perhaps they should start with at least ensuring the fantasy version appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the strangest features of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the various global cataclysms, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose events are mostly not shown in the films themselves; the films have turned into a alarm clock perpetually running a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a large assortment of Marvel stuff that various wikis helpfully explain to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated adventure *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so seem pretty detached from our sense of time. But the poorer material is among the weakest the studio has ever produced: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by this stuff, we're in for a great deal of frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the accompanying spin that in truth, this confusing mess happening in front of us is crucial to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will likely prove accurate.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is located in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, initiating its timeline around 2016. Thus, when a virus that knocks out the majority of Earth’s human population has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of primates, it’s merely 2026, with further human indignities (and victories for apes) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this virus propagates globally and set in 2019, appears downright eerie in the aftermath of the real-world global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re already six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously wounded by the ongoing virus, hasn't been wiped out, and our technology certainly has not been disabled. Yet this bleakest of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a substantial downer in store, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably lead to warfare, no matter the efforts of the best-intentioned among us. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, even if those drives are not held by the most. Currently, it seems hard to argue with 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 centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists lord over the towers as workers toil below the surface on the equipment that keep everything running. Rich surface resident Freder, son of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these massive class divisions when he falls for Maria, an subterranean activist who advocates for a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans creates a robot in her likeness, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a robot created to imitate a human isn't a tool of the elite, but someone who wants to see them destroyed; it's a component flipped by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology depends on old-fashioned manual labor, which appears as a perfect fusion of conservative disdain for “the working class” and business enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's simple to imagine a somewhat less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a resurgence to industrial production. The more complex, less plausible feat is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is bridged with compassion; rather than with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the chance