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The year 2025 could appear more futuristic. Perhaps it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with every futuristic development – chiefly the broad integration of AI – appearing bleak, or perhaps more grim. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored anti-human technology might operate a bit better?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm regarding this?

The answer, at least concerning our sci-fi movies made long ago (or occasionally months ago) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of those warnings are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but specifically implausible (when mankind is ultimately decimated, we will most likely take the primate species alongside us). Others of them are visionary; the rest just resemble poor green screen. Yet it remains worth examining where different directors, from geniuses to grunts, believed we'd be situated by now in the world's evolution. Therefore, we shall examine at some of the movies that have been set 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 20th anniversary was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can establish a scientific outpost. Currently, the negative events – regarding narrative and concerning garish cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – doesn't really go down for another 20 years in the future, so even if we find a Martian gateway now, we might have a respite to avert catastrophe. Were we to discover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether Elon Musk would remain super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the portal was not a thing he funded himself, enabling him to claim messianic credit for humanity's journey into the stars. This precedes we consider the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and subsequent mutations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for the reasons we let Mars become a stretch-goal aspiration for humanity. Whether in John Carpenter's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely act as a symbol of optimism. If anyone wants to make that dubious Martian real estate sale, perhaps they ought to begin with at least making the fantasy version look good.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the strangest features of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the various world-threatening cataclysms, including a half-decade leap whose occurrences are mostly not shown in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a alarm clock perpetually set a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of MCU content 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*, take place distant from Earth, and so seem pretty detached from our sense of time. However the poorer material is some of the worst Marvel has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're in for a whole lot of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, including the related narrative that actually, this nonsensical crap unfolding before our eyes is essential to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the real world that claim will likely turn out to be correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the further-flung future of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, starting its timeline approximately 2016. Thus, when a virus that knocks out the majority of Earth’s human population has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s merely 2026, with further human indignities (and simian triumphs) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this contagion propagates globally and taking place in 2019, looks downright eerie in the aftermath of the actual 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 society, though obviously impacted by the still-spreading virus, was not annihilated, and our technology certainly has not been knocked out. Yet this most pessimistic of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a significant bummer in store, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will unavoidably result in warfare, regardless of the efforts of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, even if those instincts are not held by the most. Currently, it feels difficult to argue with that, even though we probably should.

Metropolis

By far the best-known portrayal 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 futuristic city where wealthy industrialists lord over the towers as laborers work tirelessly underground on the equipment that keep everything running. Rich surface resident Freder, son of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these enormous class divisions when he falls for Maria, an underground activist who advocates for a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans creates a automaton in her image, aiming to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a machine created to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but someone who wants to witness their downfall; it's one element flipped by the modern world in a future that in other ways seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology depends on traditional human toil, which appears as a most logical fusion of rightwing disdain for “unskilled workers” and corporate zeal for an AI bubble. It has not yet come to pass, but it's simple to picture a slightly less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a return to manufacturing. The trickier, harder-to-imagine 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 appears optimistic about the chance