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The date 2025 might sound more futuristic. Perhaps it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 represents a leap forward, and it's where we currently stand, with every futuristic advancement – primarily the broad integration of artificial intelligence – seeming dystopian, or possibly even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology would actually function a bit better?) Did no one warn us regarding this?

The response, particularly regarding our sci-fi movies made long ago (or sometimes recently) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of those warnings are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but specifically implausible (when mankind is ultimately decimated, we will most likely bring down the primate species with us). Some of them are visionary; the rest just resemble bad green screen. But it's valuable to explore where various film-makers, from geniuses to grunts, believed we'd be situated by this time in the world's evolution. Therefore, we shall take a look a selection of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they contain any lessons to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this isn't promising. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth can set up a scientific outpost. Now, the bad stuff – regarding plot and concerning garish cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually go down for two more decades in the future, so should we do discover a Martian gateway this year, we might have a respite to avert true disaster. If we did discover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether Elon Musk would remain extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the portal was not a thing he personally paid for, enabling him to assert savior-like credit for mankind's journey into the stars. That's before we consider the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent mutations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for the reasons we let Mars serve as a long-term hope for mankind. Whether in John Carpenter's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to serve as a symbol of hope. If anyone wishes to close that dubious Martian property deal, perhaps they should start with first ensuring the fictional depiction look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the goofiest quirks of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the multiple global disasters, encompassing a half-decade leap whose events are largely not shown in the movies themselves; the films have become like a clock radio perpetually set a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. So there's a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that fan sites helpfully explain to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, occur distant 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 remote-meeting farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're facing a great deal of frustrating stagnation in 2026, along with the related 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 probably prove correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, initiating its chronology approximately 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that knocks out the majority of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of apes, it’s only 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this virus spreads around the world and taking place around 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the wake of the real-world pandemic that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems 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, hasn't been wiped out, and our technology certainly hasn't been knocked out. But this most pessimistic of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a substantial downer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably lead to warfare, regardless of the efforts of the best-intentioned among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, even if those instincts are not held by the majority. Right now, it feels hard to argue with that, even though we ought to try.

Metropolis

Easily the best-known portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing marking 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 laborers work tirelessly underground on the machines that power the city. Affluent city-dweller Freder, scion 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 scientist with darker plans builds a robot in her likeness, aiming to bring the whole of Metropolis to ruin. Here, a robot designed to imitate a human isn't a tool of the elite, but someone who wants to see them destroyed; it's one element flipped by the modern world in a future that in other ways appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology relies on traditional human toil, which appears as a perfect fusion of conservative disdain for “the working class” and corporate zeal for an tech boom. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's easy to picture a slightly more utilitarian version of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a return to manufacturing. The trickier, harder-to-imagine feat is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is bridged with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the chance