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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 currently stand, with every science-fiction-style development – chiefly the broad integration of artificial intelligence – appearing dystopian, or perhaps more grim. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed anti-human technology might function more effectively?) Did no one sound the alarm about this?

The answer, particularly regarding our sci-fi movies from years ago (or sometimes recently) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of those warnings are broadly applicable (global catastrophe) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably ravaged, we will most likely bring down the primate species alongside us). Others of them are visionary; others just look like poor green screen. Yet it remains worth examining where various film-makers, ranging from masters to journeymen, believed we'd be situated by now in the world's evolution. So let's examine at some of the films that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and see if they have anything to impart.

Doom

Well, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to establish a research facility. Now, the bad stuff – regarding narrative and in terms of garish film versions of a FPS video game – doesn't really transpire for two more decades later, so should we do discover a portal to Mars this year, we might have some time to avert true disaster. If we did uncover a portal to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would still be super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the portal wasn't something he personally paid for, allowing him to assert messianic credit for mankind's journey to the cosmos. This precedes we even get to the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent mutations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for the reasons we allow Mars become a stretch-goal aspiration for mankind. Whether in the director's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic 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 symbol of hope. Should someone wishes to make that dubious Martian property deal, maybe they should start with at least ensuring the fantasy version appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the strangest features of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the multiple world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose events are mostly undepicted in the movies themselves; the films have turned into a alarm clock perpetually set a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of Marvel stuff 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 distant from Earth, and so seem quite unmoored from our sense of time. However the bad stuff is among the weakest Marvel has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're facing a whole lot of frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the related narrative that in truth, this confusing mess unfolding before our eyes is essential to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will likely prove accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is located in the further-flung future of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, starting its chronology approximately 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that knocks out most of Earth’s people has run its course, and also enhanced the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s only 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this virus propagates globally and taking place in 2019, looks downright eerie in the aftermath of the actual global health crisis that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; astonishingly, we’re now half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly wounded by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been wiped out, and technological infrastructure certainly hasn't been knocked out. Yet this bleakest of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a substantial downer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines either, will unavoidably result in violent conflict, no matter the efforts of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, although those drives are not held by the majority. Right now, it feels difficult to dispute that, even though we ought to try.

Metropolis

Easily the best-known depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to celebrating its centennial. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen lord over the towers as workers work tirelessly below the surface on the equipment that keep everything running. Rich city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these enormous social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground organizer who advocates for a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans creates a robot in her likeness, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a machine designed to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who desires to see them destroyed; it's a component flipped by reality in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology depends on traditional human toil, which appears as a most logical fusion of rightwing disdain for “unskilled workers” and business zeal for an tech boom. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's easy to picture a somewhat less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a resurgence to industrial production. The trickier, less plausible accomplishment 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 pleads for coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the possibility