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The date 2025 could appear more futuristic. Perhaps it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 represents a leap forward, and it's where we find ourselves, with each science-fiction-style development – chiefly the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – appearing bleak, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology would actually function a bit better?) Did no one sound the alarm regarding this?

The response, at least regarding our sci-fi movies from years ago (or occasionally recently) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of those warnings are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but specifically implausible (if humanity is ultimately ravaged, we will almost certainly take the ape population alongside us). Others of them are visionary; others just resemble poor green screen. But it's valuable to explore where various directors, ranging from masters to journeymen, thought we'd be positioned by now in our planet's development. So let's examine at some of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they contain any lessons to impart.

Doom

Well, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to set up a scientific outpost. Currently, the negative events – in terms of plot and in terms of garish cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really go down for two more decades in the future, so even if we do discover a portal to Mars this year, we might have some time to avert true disaster. Were we to uncover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would still be super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the portal wasn't something he funded himself, allowing him to assert savior-like ownership for mankind's expansion to the cosmos. That's before we consider the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting mutations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a good test case for why, exactly we allow Mars become a long-term hope for humanity. Whether in the director's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely act as a symbol of hope. If anyone wishes to make that dubious Martian real estate sale, maybe they ought to begin with at least making the fantasy version look good.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the strangest features of the present MCU is how to account for the various global disasters, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose events are largely not shown in the movies themselves; the films have become like a alarm clock perpetually set a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a whole bunch of MCU content that various wikis clarify to be taking place in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated adventure *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so seem pretty detached from our sense of time. But the poorer material is some of the worst Marvel has ever produced: 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 whole lot of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the related narrative that actually, this nonsensical crap unfolding in front of us is essential to future events. Even worse, in the real world that assertion will probably prove correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the more distant future of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, starting its chronology approximately 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that devastates the majority of Earth’s people has run its course, and also boosted the intelligence of apes, it’s merely 2026, with additional human indignities (and victories for apes) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this virus spreads globally and set in 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the wake of the actual global health crisis that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; astonishingly, we’re already half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously wounded by the ongoing virus, hasn't been wiped out, and our technology definitely has not been knocked out. Yet this most pessimistic of the four modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a significant bummer in store, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably lead to warfare, 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 most. Currently, it feels difficult to argue with that, even though we probably should.

Metropolis

By far the most prominent depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing marking its 100th anniversary. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where rich businessmen lord over the skyscrapers as workers work tirelessly underground on the machines that keep everything running. Affluent city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these massive class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground activist who preaches a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans creates a robot in her likeness, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a machine created to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but an entity who wants to see them destroyed; it's a component flipped by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery relies on traditional human toil, which seems like a most logical fusion of rightwing disdain for “the working class” and business enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It has not yet come to pass, but it's easy to imagine a somewhat less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The more complex, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the have-nots is spanned with love; rather than with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the possibility