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The date 2025 could appear more futuristic. Perhaps it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with each science-fiction-style advancement – primarily the broad integration of AI – appearing dystopian, or possibly even worse. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed dehumanizing technology might operate a bit better?) Did no one sound the alarm regarding this?

The response, particularly concerning science fiction films made long ago (or occasionally recently) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of these prophecies are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but specifically far-fetched (when mankind is ultimately decimated, we will most likely bring down the ape population with us). Others of them are visionary; the rest just look like bad visual effects. But it's worth examining where different film-makers, ranging from masters to grunts, believed we'd be positioned by this time in the world's evolution. Therefore, we shall take a look a selection of the films that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they contain any lessons to impart.

The Game '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 long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to set up a scientific outpost. Currently, the bad stuff – regarding plot and in terms of over-the-top cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – doesn't really transpire for two more decades in the future, so even if we do discover a Martian gateway now, we could gain a respite to avoid catastrophe. Were we to discover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would remain extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the discovery wasn't something he personally paid for, allowing him to assert savior-like credit for humanity's journey to the cosmos. That's before we consider the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting mutations into horrific creatures. (Again, 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 become a stretch-goal 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 far-off planet doesn't tend to serve as a beacon of hope. Should someone wishes to close that dubious red-planet property deal, maybe they should start with first making the fantasy version appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the goofiest quirks of the current MCU is the way it handles the various global cataclysms, including a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are largely not shown in the films themselves; the movies have turned into a clock radio perpetually running a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of MCU content that fan sites clarify to be set 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 feel quite unmoored from our sense of time. But the bad stuff is some of the worst the studio has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on this stuff, we're in for a great deal of annoying stagnation in 2026, along with the accompanying narrative that actually, this nonsensical crap unfolding in front of us is essential to future events. More troublingly, in the actual world that claim will likely prove accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is located 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, initiating its chronology around 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s merely 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this contagion propagates around the world and set in 2019, looks downright eerie in the wake of the actual pandemic that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re now half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though obviously wounded by the ongoing virus, hasn't been annihilated, and our technology certainly has not been knocked out. Yet this most pessimistic of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a significant bummer in store, suggesting that human and/or ape nature, however one defines either, will inevitably lead to violent conflict, regardless of the work of the most well-meaning among us. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, even if those instincts don't represent the majority. Currently, it seems difficult to dispute that, even though we probably should.

The Silent Classic

By far the best-known portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie close to marking its 100th anniversary. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists lord over the towers as laborers toil below the surface on the machines that power the city. Affluent surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these massive class divisions when he falls for Maria, an subterranean organizer who preaches a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans builds a automaton in her image, aiming to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. Here, a machine designed to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but an entity who wants to witness their downfall; it's a component inverted by reality in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery relies on old-fashioned human toil, which appears as a most logical 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 picture a slightly less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a return to industrial production. The more complex, harder-to-imagine feat is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the haves and the poor is spanned with love; not so much with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the possibility