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The date 2025 might sound more futuristic. Perhaps it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies a leap forward, and it's where we currently stand, with every futuristic development – primarily the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – seeming bleak, or possibly even worse. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed anti-human technology would actually function a bit better?) Didn't anyone warn us regarding this?

The answer, particularly regarding science fiction films made long ago (or occasionally months ago) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of those warnings are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably ravaged, we will most likely take the ape population with us). Some of them are visionary; others just resemble poor visual effects. Yet it remains worth examining where various directors, from geniuses to grunts, thought we'd be situated by this time in our planet's evolution. Therefore, we shall take a look at some of the films that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and determine if they contain any lessons to impart.

Doom

Well, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth can establish a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – in terms of narrative and in terms of over-the-top film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually transpire for another 20 years later, so should we do discover a portal to Mars this year, we could gain a respite to avert catastrophe. Were we to 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 instantly become disheartened that the portal was not a thing he funded himself, enabling him to assert messianic credit for mankind's journey into the stars. That's before we even get to the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent mutations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, not to be confused with the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for why, exactly we allow Mars become a long-term hope for humanity. Be it in John Carpenter's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely act as a symbol of hope. If anyone wishes to make that dubious red-planet real estate sale, maybe they ought to begin with at least making the fictional depiction appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the strangest features of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the various global cataclysms, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are largely not shown in the films themselves; the films have turned into a clock radio perpetually running a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a large assortment of MCU content that fan sites helpfully explain 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 quite detached from any concrete sense of time. However the bad stuff is among the weakest Marvel has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're facing a whole lot of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, including the related spin that actually, this confusing mess unfolding in front of us is crucial to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will probably prove accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, initiating its chronology around 2016. So by the time a virus that devastates most of Earth’s human population has run its course, and also enhanced the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s merely 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this virus spreads around the world and set around 2019, looks downright eerie in the aftermath of the actual global health crisis that would begin in 2020. By comparison, 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 impacted by the ongoing virus, was not annihilated, and our technology definitely hasn't been disabled. But this most pessimistic of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a significant bummer in store, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines each, will inevitably lead to violent conflict, regardless of the work of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, even if those instincts don't represent the most. Currently, it feels difficult to dispute that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

By far the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to celebrating its centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen lord over the skyscrapers as laborers toil below the surface on the machines that keep everything running. Rich surface resident Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these enormous class divisions when he falls for Maria, an underground organizer who preaches a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans creates a robot in her image, aiming to tear the entire Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a robot designed to imitate a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who desires to see them destroyed; it's one element inverted by the modern world in a future that in other ways appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology relies on traditional human toil, which appears as a most logical union of rightwing contempt for “unskilled workers” and corporate zeal for an AI bubble. It has not yet come to pass, but it's simple to imagine a slightly less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a return to industrial production. The trickier, less plausible feat is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the poor is spanned with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the possibility