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The year 2025 might sound more futuristic. Maybe it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 represents one step beyond, a moment where we currently stand, with each science-fiction-style development – chiefly the broad integration of AI – appearing dystopian, or possibly even worse. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed anti-human technology might operate a bit better?) Didn't anyone warn us regarding this?

The answer, at least regarding science fiction films made long ago (or occasionally months ago) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of those warnings are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but specifically implausible (if humanity is inevitably ravaged, we will almost certainly bring down the ape population with us). Some of them are visionary; others just look like bad green screen. Yet it remains worth examining where various directors, from geniuses to journeymen, thought we'd be positioned by now in our planet's development. So let's take a look at some of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they have anything to teach us.

Doom

Well, this isn't promising. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to establish a research facility. Currently, the bad stuff – in terms of narrative and concerning garish film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really go down for another 20 years in the future, so even if we find a Martian gateway now, we could gain some time to avoid true disaster. If we did discover a portal to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether Elon Musk would remain extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the discovery wasn't something he funded himself, allowing him to assert savior-like ownership for humanity's expansion into the stars. This precedes we even get to the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and subsequent mutations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for why, exactly we let Mars become a stretch-goal aspiration for humanity. Whether in the director's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely serve as a symbol of optimism. If anyone wants to close that questionable Martian property deal, perhaps they should start with at least ensuring the fantasy version appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the strangest features of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the various world-threatening disasters, encompassing a half-decade leap whose events are largely not shown in the films themselves; the films have turned into a alarm clock perpetually set a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of MCU content that fan sites clarify to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated adventure *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so feel pretty detached from any concrete sense of time. But the poorer material is among the weakest the studio has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're in for a whole lot of frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the related spin that actually, this confusing mess unfolding 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

The majority of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is located in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, initiating its chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s people has done its damage, and simultaneously boosted the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s merely 2026, with further human indignities (and victories for apes) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this contagion spreads globally and taking place in 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the wake of the actual global health crisis that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; if you can believe it, we’re now half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though obviously wounded by the ongoing virus, hasn't been annihilated, and technological infrastructure definitely hasn't been disabled. But this bleakest of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a significant downer in store, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably result in violent conflict, no matter the efforts of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, although those drives are not held by the most. Currently, it feels difficult to dispute that, even though we probably should.

Metropolis

By far the best-known portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie close to marking its centennial. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen preside over the skyscrapers as workers toil underground on the equipment that keep everything running. Affluent surface resident Freder, son of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these enormous class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground activist who advocates for a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans builds a automaton in her likeness, hoping to bring the entire Metropolis down in flames. Here, a machine created to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who desires to see them destroyed; it's one element flipped by the modern world in a future that otherwise seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology depends on traditional manual labor, which appears as a most logical union of conservative contempt for “unskilled workers” and corporate zeal for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's simple to imagine a slightly more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a return to manufacturing. The trickier, less plausible feat is the ending of the film, where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is spanned with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the chance