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The year 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies a leap forward, and it's where we find ourselves, with each science-fiction-style development – chiefly the widespread adoption of AI – seeming dystopian, or perhaps more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed dehumanizing technology would actually function more effectively?) Did no one sound the alarm regarding this?

The answer, particularly concerning science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally months ago) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of those warnings are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (when mankind is inevitably decimated, we will almost certainly bring down the ape population with us). Some of them are visionary; others just resemble bad visual effects. Yet it remains worth examining where different film-makers, ranging from masters to journeymen, believed we'd be situated by this time in our planet's development. So let's take a look a selection of the films that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and determine if they have anything to impart.

Doom

Well, this doesn't bode well. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth can establish a scientific outpost. Now, the bad stuff – in terms of plot and in terms of over-the-top cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually transpire for two more decades later, so should we do discover a Martian gateway this year, we could gain a respite to avoid catastrophe. Were we to uncover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether Elon Musk would remain extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the portal was not a thing he personally paid for, allowing him to assert savior-like credit for humanity's journey into the stars. That's before we even get to the collection of Martian chromosomes and subsequent transformations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for why, exactly we let Mars serve as a long-term hope for mankind. Be it in the director's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely act as a beacon of hope. Should someone wants to make that dubious Martian property deal, perhaps they should start with at least ensuring the fantasy version appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the strangest features of the current MCU is the way it handles the multiple world-threatening cataclysms, including a half-decade leap whose occurrences are mostly undepicted in the films themselves; the movies have turned into a alarm clock constantly set a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of MCU content that fan sites helpfully explain 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 seem quite detached from our sense of time. But the poorer material is among the weakest Marvel has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by this stuff, we're in for a whole lot of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the accompanying narrative that actually, this nonsensical crap happening before our eyes is essential to future events. More troublingly, in the actual world that assertion will likely prove correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the further-flung future of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, starting its chronology around 2016. Thus, when a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and simultaneously boosted the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s merely 2026, with further human indignities (and victories for apes) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this virus spreads globally and taking place around 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the wake of the real-world pandemic that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; if you can believe it, we’re now six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though clearly impacted by the still-spreading virus, was not annihilated, and our technology definitely has not been knocked out. But this most pessimistic of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a significant bummer in store, implying that human and/or ape nature, however one defines either, will unavoidably lead to violent conflict, regardless of the efforts of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, even if those instincts don't represent the most. Currently, it feels difficult to argue with that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

Metropolis

By far the most prominent depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to marking its centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where rich businessmen preside over the skyscrapers as workers toil 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 activist who advocates for a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans creates a robot in her likeness, aiming to tear the entire Metropolis to ruin. Here, a machine created to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but someone who wants to witness their downfall; 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 envisions a world where advanced machinery depends on traditional human toil, which seems like a perfect union of conservative contempt for “unskilled workers” and corporate enthusiasm for an tech boom. It has not yet materialized, but it's easy to imagine a somewhat more utilitarian version of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a resurgence to industrial production. The more complex, harder-to-imagine feat is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the poor is bridged with compassion; not so much with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the chance