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The date 2025 might sound more futuristic. Perhaps it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 represents a leap forward, and it's where we find ourselves, with each futuristic development – primarily the broad integration of artificial intelligence – seeming dystopian, or possibly even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology would actually operate a bit better?) Did no one warn us regarding this?

The response, particularly regarding our sci-fi movies from years ago (or sometimes recently) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of those warnings are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but specifically far-fetched (when mankind is inevitably ravaged, we will almost certainly bring down the primate species alongside us). Others of them are prescient; others just resemble bad visual effects. But it's valuable to explore where various film-makers, from geniuses to grunts, thought we'd be positioned by this time in our planet's development. Therefore, we shall take a look a selection of the films that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and see if they contain any lessons to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this isn't promising. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Currently, the negative events – in terms of plot and concerning garish cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – does not actually transpire for two more decades in the future, so even if we do discover a Martian gateway now, we could gain some time to avert catastrophe. If we did discover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether Elon Musk would still be extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the portal wasn't something he personally paid for, allowing him to claim messianic ownership for mankind's journey to the cosmos. That's before we consider the collection of Martian chromosomes and resulting mutations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is closer to 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for the reasons we let Mars serve as a long-term hope for mankind. Whether in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely serve as a symbol of hope. If anyone wishes to close that questionable red-planet real estate sale, maybe they ought to begin with first ensuring the fictional depiction appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the strangest features of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the various world-threatening disasters, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are mostly not shown in the movies themselves; the films have become like a clock radio perpetually running a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of MCU content that various wikis helpfully explain to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so seem quite unmoored from any concrete sense of time. However the bad stuff is among the weakest 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 this stuff, we're facing a whole lot of annoying stagnation in 2026, including the accompanying narrative that in truth, this nonsensical crap happening before our eyes is crucial to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the real world that claim will likely prove accurate.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* series 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* begins nearer the present, initiating its chronology approximately 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that knocks out most of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of primates, it’s only 2026, with further human indignities (and victories for apes) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this contagion spreads around the world and set in 2019, appears downright eerie in the wake of the actual 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 spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously wounded by the still-spreading virus, was not wiped out, and technological infrastructure certainly hasn't been knocked out. Yet this most pessimistic of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a substantial bummer to offer, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably result in warfare, regardless of the work of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, even if those drives are not held by the majority. Currently, it seems hard to dispute that, even though we probably should.

Metropolis

Easily the best-known portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to marking its centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists lord over the towers as workers toil underground on the equipment that keep everything running. Rich surface resident Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these enormous class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean organizer who advocates for a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans builds a automaton in her image, aiming to bring the whole of Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a robot created to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who wants to witness their downfall; it's a component flipped by reality in a future that in other ways appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery depends on old-fashioned human toil, which appears as a perfect fusion of rightwing disdain for “the working class” and corporate enthusiasm for an tech boom. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's simple to imagine a somewhat less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a resurgence to manufacturing. The trickier, less plausible accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is bridged with love; not so much with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the chance