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The date 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies one step beyond, a moment where we find ourselves, with every futuristic development – primarily the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – seeming dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed anti-human technology would actually function more effectively?) Didn't anyone warn us regarding this?

The response, at least regarding science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally months ago) set in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of those warnings are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but specifically implausible (if humanity is inevitably ravaged, we will most likely bring down the ape population with us). Others of them are visionary; others just look like poor visual effects. Yet it remains valuable to explore where different film-makers, from geniuses to grunts, thought we'd be situated by now in the world's evolution. Therefore, we shall examine a selection of the films that have been set in 2026 over the years and determine if they have anything to impart.

Doom

Now, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to set up a research facility. Now, the bad stuff – regarding narrative and concerning garish cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – does not actually go down for two more decades in the future, so even if we find a Martian gateway this year, we could gain some time to avoid true disaster. If we did uncover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether Elon Musk would remain super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the portal wasn't something he funded himself, enabling him to claim savior-like ownership for humanity's journey to the cosmos. This precedes we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent mutations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for the reasons we let Mars serve as a stretch-goal hope for humanity. Whether in John Carpenter's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to serve as a beacon of hope. Should someone wants to close that dubious red-planet real estate sale, perhaps they ought to begin with first making the fantasy version look good.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the goofiest quirks of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the various global disasters, including a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are mostly undepicted in the films themselves; the movies have turned into a alarm clock perpetually set a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. 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*, take place far away from Earth, and so feel quite unmoored from any concrete sense of time. However the bad stuff is some of the worst Marvel has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're facing a whole lot of frustrating stagnation in 2026, along with the related narrative that in truth, this confusing mess unfolding in front of us is crucial to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the real world that assertion will likely turn out to be correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the classic 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, starting its chronology around 2016. Thus, when a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s human population has run its course, and also boosted the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s merely 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this contagion spreads around the world and taking place in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the real-world global health crisis that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; if you can believe it, we’re now half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously impacted by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been wiped out, and technological infrastructure definitely hasn't been disabled. Yet this bleakest of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a substantial bummer 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 individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, even if those drives are not held by the majority. Currently, it feels difficult to dispute that, even though we probably should.

The Silent Classic

By far the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists lord over the skyscrapers as workers work tirelessly underground on the machines that keep everything running. Rich city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these enormous social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground activist who advocates for a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans builds a automaton in her likeness, hoping to bring the entire Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a machine designed to mimic a human isn't a tool of the elite, but an entity who wants to witness their downfall; it's a component inverted by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery depends on traditional manual labor, which appears as a perfect union of rightwing contempt for “the working class” and business zeal for an tech boom. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's simple to imagine a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a resurgence to industrial production. The trickier, harder-to-imagine feat is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the poor is bridged with love; rather than with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the chance