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The date 2025 might sound more futuristic. Perhaps it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 represents a leap forward, a moment where we find ourselves, with each futuristic development – chiefly the broad integration of artificial intelligence – appearing dystopian, or possibly even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology might function more effectively?) Did no one sound the alarm regarding this?

The response, at least regarding science fiction films from years ago (or sometimes months ago) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of those warnings are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but specifically implausible (if humanity is ultimately 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, from geniuses to journeymen, thought we'd be positioned by this time in the world's development. Therefore, we shall examine a selection of the films that have been set in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they have anything to impart.

Doom

Well, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth can establish a research facility. Now, the negative events – in terms of narrative and in terms of over-the-top film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually go down for another 20 years in the future, so even if we find a Martian gateway this year, we might have some time to avert catastrophe. Were we to uncover a portal to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would remain super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the portal wasn't something he personally paid for, allowing him to claim messianic credit for humanity's expansion to the cosmos. This precedes we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent mutations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for why, exactly we let Mars serve as a long-term aspiration for mankind. Be it in the director's cheap-looking genre hybrid *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 act as a beacon of optimism. Should someone wishes to make that dubious Martian property deal, perhaps they should start with first making the fictional depiction appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the strangest features of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the various world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are mostly not shown in the films themselves; the films have become like a alarm clock constantly running a few seconds fast – except with 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 adventure *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so feel quite detached from any concrete sense of time. However the bad stuff is some of the worst Marvel has ever produced: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by this stuff, we're in for a whole lot of frustrating stagnation in 2026, along with the accompanying narrative that in truth, this nonsensical crap happening before our eyes is crucial to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will probably prove correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the further-flung future of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, initiating its chronology approximately 2016. Thus, when a virus that devastates most of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of apes, it’s only 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 around 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the wake of the real-world global health crisis that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; if you can believe it, we’re now half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously impacted by the ongoing virus, hasn't been wiped out, and our technology definitely hasn't been knocked out. But this bleakest of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a significant downer to offer, implying that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as either, will unavoidably lead to violent conflict, regardless of the efforts of the most well-meaning among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, although those drives are not held by the majority. Right now, it feels hard to dispute that, even though 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* is set in a futuristic city where wealthy industrialists lord over the towers as workers toil below the surface on the equipment that keep everything running. Affluent surface resident Freder, son of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these enormous social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground organizer who advocates for a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans creates a automaton in her likeness, aiming to bring the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a machine designed to mimic a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who desires to see them destroyed; it's a component inverted by reality in a future that in other ways appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery relies on traditional human toil, which appears as a most logical fusion of conservative contempt for “the working class” and corporate zeal for an tech boom. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's simple to imagine a slightly more utilitarian version of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The more complex, harder-to-imagine feat is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the poor is spanned with compassion; not so much with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the chance