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The year 2025 might sound more futuristic. Maybe it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 represents one step beyond, a moment where we find ourselves, with each futuristic advancement – primarily the broad integration of AI – seeming dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology might operate a bit better?) Didn't anyone warn us regarding this?

The response, particularly concerning science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally recently) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of those warnings are broadly applicable (global catastrophe) but specifically implausible (when mankind is ultimately ravaged, we will almost certainly bring down the ape population alongside us). Some of them are prescient; the rest just look like poor visual effects. Yet it remains worth examining where different film-makers, ranging from masters to grunts, thought we'd be situated by now in our planet's evolution. So let's examine a selection of the films that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and determine if they contain any lessons to impart.

Doom

Now, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to set up a research facility. Now, the bad stuff – regarding plot and concerning over-the-top film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually transpire for another 20 years later, so even if we do discover a portal to Mars this year, we might have a respite to avoid true disaster. Were we to uncover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would still be super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the portal wasn't something he funded himself, allowing him to assert messianic credit for humanity's expansion to the cosmos. This precedes we even get to the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and subsequent transformations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a good test case for why, exactly we allow Mars serve as a stretch-goal hope for humanity. Be it in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely act as a beacon of optimism. Should someone wants to make that dubious red-planet property deal, maybe they ought to begin with at least ensuring the fictional depiction look good.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the goofiest quirks of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the multiple world-threatening disasters, encompassing a half-decade leap whose events are largely undepicted in the films themselves; the movies have become like a alarm clock perpetually set a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's years. So there's a whole bunch of MCU content that fan sites clarify to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so seem pretty detached from our sense of time. But the bad stuff is among the weakest Marvel has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're facing a whole lot of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the accompanying spin that actually, this nonsensical crap unfolding before our eyes is crucial to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will likely prove accurate.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, initiating its chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a pathogen that knocks out the majority of Earth’s human population has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of primates, it’s merely 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this virus spreads globally and set around 2019, appears downright eerie in the wake of the actual global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; if you can believe it, we’re now 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. But this bleakest of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a substantial bummer to offer, suggesting that human and/or ape nature, however one defines each, will inevitably result in violent conflict, no matter the efforts of the best-intentioned among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, even if those instincts are not held by the most. Right now, it feels hard to argue with that, even though we probably should.

The Silent Classic

Easily the most prominent depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen lord over the towers as laborers work tirelessly underground on the machines that power the city. Affluent city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these massive social gaps when he falls for Maria, an underground activist who preaches a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans builds a automaton in her image, aiming to tear the entire Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a robot designed to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who desires to witness their downfall; it's a component inverted by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology depends on traditional manual labor, which appears as a most logical fusion of conservative disdain for “the working class” and corporate zeal for an tech boom. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's simple to imagine a slightly less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a resurgence to industrial production. The trickier, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the have-nots is bridged with compassion; not so much with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the chance