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The date 2025 could appear more futuristic. Maybe it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 represents one step beyond, and it's where we find ourselves, with every science-fiction-style development – chiefly the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – seeming bleak, or possibly more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology would actually operate a bit better?) Didn't anyone warn us about this?

The answer, at least concerning our sci-fi movies made long ago (or occasionally months ago) set in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of those warnings are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably ravaged, we will almost certainly bring down the primate species with us). Others of them are prescient; others just look like poor visual effects. Yet it remains valuable to explore where various film-makers, ranging from masters to journeymen, thought we'd be positioned by this time in our planet's development. So let's examine a selection of the films that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and determine if they have anything to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, 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 discovers a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can set up a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – in terms of plot and concerning garish cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – does not actually go down for another 20 years later, so even if we do discover a portal to Mars this year, we might have a respite to avert true disaster. If we did uncover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether Elon Musk would still be extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the portal was not a thing he personally paid for, enabling him to assert savior-like credit for mankind's expansion to the cosmos. That's before we consider the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and resulting transformations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a good test case for why, exactly we allow Mars serve as a long-term hope for humanity. Whether in John Carpenter's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely act as a symbol of optimism. If anyone wants to make that questionable Martian real estate sale, maybe they should start with first making the fictional depiction look good.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the strangest features of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the various world-threatening disasters, including a half-decade leap whose events are largely undepicted in the movies themselves; the films have turned into 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 fan sites helpfully explain to be set in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated adventure *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so seem quite detached from any concrete sense of time. But the poorer material is some of the worst the studio has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on this stuff, we're in for a whole lot of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the related spin that actually, this confusing mess happening in front of us is crucial to future events. More troublingly, in the actual world that assertion will likely prove accurate.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is located in the further-flung future of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, starting its chronology around 2016. Thus, when a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s people has done its damage, and simultaneously boosted the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s merely 2026, with additional human indignities (and simian triumphs) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this virus propagates around the world and taking place in 2019, looks downright eerie in the wake of the actual global health crisis that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; if you can believe it, we’re already half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly wounded by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been annihilated, and our technology definitely has not been knocked out. But this most pessimistic of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a substantial bummer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines each, will inevitably lead to warfare, no matter the work of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, even if those instincts don't represent the majority. Right now, it seems hard to argue with that, despite the fact that we probably should.

Metropolis

Easily the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing marking its centennial. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where wealthy industrialists preside over the towers as workers toil below the surface on the equipment that power the city. Rich surface resident Freder, son of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these enormous class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground activist who advocates for a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans builds a automaton in her image, hoping to tear the entire Metropolis down in flames. Here, a robot designed 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 inverted by reality in a future that in other ways seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery depends on old-fashioned manual labor, which seems like a perfect union of rightwing contempt for “unskilled workers” and business zeal for an AI bubble. It has not yet come to pass, but it's easy to imagine a slightly more utilitarian version of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a return to manufacturing. The more complex, harder-to-imagine feat is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is spanned with compassion; rather than with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the chance