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The date 2025 could appear more futuristic. Maybe it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 represents a leap forward, and it's where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style advancement – chiefly the widespread adoption of AI – seeming bleak, or possibly more grim. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed anti-human technology would actually function more effectively?) Did no one sound the alarm regarding this?

The answer, at least concerning science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally months ago) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of those warnings are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but specifically far-fetched (when mankind is inevitably decimated, we will almost certainly take the primate species alongside us). Others of them are visionary; the rest just resemble bad green screen. Yet it remains worth examining where different directors, ranging from masters to grunts, believed we'd be situated by now in our planet's development. Therefore, we shall take a look at some of the films that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they contain any lessons to teach us.

Doom

Now, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Currently, the bad stuff – in terms of narrative and in terms of over-the-top cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really transpire for another 20 years later, so even if we find a portal to Mars this year, we could gain some time to avoid catastrophe. Were we to discover a portal to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would remain super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the portal wasn't something he personally paid for, allowing him to claim savior-like ownership for mankind's journey to the cosmos. This precedes 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.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a good test case for why, exactly we allow Mars serve as a stretch-goal aspiration for humanity. Be it in the director's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to act as a beacon of optimism. If anyone wants to make that questionable Martian real estate sale, perhaps they ought to begin with first ensuring the fantasy version appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the goofiest quirks of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the various global disasters, including a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are mostly undepicted in the films themselves; the films have turned into a alarm clock perpetually set a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of MCU content that fan sites clarify to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated romp *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so seem pretty detached from any concrete sense of time. But the bad stuff is some of the worst Marvel has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by this stuff, we're in for a great deal of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, including the related spin that in truth, this confusing mess unfolding in front of us is crucial to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the real world that claim will likely turn out to be correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series is located in the more distant future of Earth, but the modern series that began 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 devastates the majority of Earth’s people has run its course, and also boosted the intelligence of primates, it’s merely 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this contagion spreads around the world and taking place in 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the real-world global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re already six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously wounded by the still-spreading virus, was not wiped out, and our technology definitely hasn't been disabled. But this bleakest of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a significant bummer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines either, will unavoidably lead to warfare, regardless of the efforts of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, even if those drives don't represent the most. Right now, it feels difficult to dispute that, despite the fact that we probably should.

Metropolis

Easily the best-known depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing marking its centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where rich businessmen lord over the towers as laborers work tirelessly underground on the machines that keep everything running. Rich city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these massive social gaps when he falls for Maria, an subterranean activist who preaches a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans creates a robot in her image, aiming to tear the whole of Metropolis to ruin. Here, a robot created to imitate a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who wants to witness their downfall; it's a component inverted by reality in a future that in other ways appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery depends on old-fashioned manual labor, which appears as a perfect fusion of rightwing disdain for “unskilled workers” and business enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's simple to imagine a slightly less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The trickier, less plausible accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the haves and the poor is bridged with compassion; rather than with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the possibility