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The year 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 represents one step beyond, and it's where we find ourselves, with each science-fiction-style advancement – chiefly the widespread adoption of AI – appearing bleak, or possibly even worse. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed dehumanizing technology would actually operate a bit better?) Did no one warn us regarding this?

The response, at least concerning our sci-fi movies from years ago (or sometimes recently) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of those warnings are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but in detail implausible (if humanity is inevitably decimated, we will most likely bring down the ape population with us). Some of them are visionary; others just resemble bad green screen. Yet it remains valuable to explore where different film-makers, from geniuses to grunts, thought we'd be positioned by now in our planet's evolution. So let's examine at some of the films that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and determine if they have anything to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to set up a research facility. Currently, the bad stuff – regarding plot and in terms of over-the-top cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – does not actually transpire for another 20 years in the future, so even if we find a Martian gateway this year, we could gain a respite to avoid catastrophe. If we did discover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether Elon Musk would remain super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the portal wasn't something he funded himself, allowing him to assert savior-like credit for humanity's journey to the cosmos. This precedes we consider the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent transformations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for why, exactly we allow Mars serve as a stretch-goal aspiration for humanity. Be it in John Carpenter's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to serve as a beacon of optimism. If anyone wants to close that dubious red-planet real estate sale, maybe they ought to begin with at least making the fictional depiction look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the goofiest quirks of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the various world-threatening disasters, including a half-decade leap whose occurrences are mostly not shown in the films themselves; the films have become like a clock radio perpetually running a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of Marvel stuff that various wikis clarify to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated romp *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so feel pretty detached from our sense of time. But the poorer material is among the weakest Marvel has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on this stuff, we're in for a great deal of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the accompanying narrative that actually, this confusing mess happening in front of us is essential to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will probably prove correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, starting its chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a pathogen that devastates most of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of apes, it’s only 2026, with additional human indignities (and victories for apes) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this contagion spreads around the world and taking place in 2019, appears downright eerie in the aftermath of the actual global health crisis that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re already six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though obviously wounded by the ongoing virus, was not wiped out, and our technology certainly has not been knocked out. Yet this bleakest of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a significant downer to offer, implying that human and/or ape nature, however one defines either, will inevitably result in violent conflict, regardless of the efforts of the most well-meaning among us. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, even if those instincts are not held by the majority. Right now, it feels difficult to dispute 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 nearing marking its 100th anniversary. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists preside over the skyscrapers as laborers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that keep everything running. Affluent surface resident Freder, son of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these massive social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground organizer who advocates for a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans creates a robot in her image, aiming to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a machine created to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but someone who desires to see them destroyed; it's a component flipped by reality in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery depends on traditional manual labor, which appears as a perfect fusion of conservative contempt for “the working class” and business zeal for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet come to pass, 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 accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the have-nots is spanned with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the chance