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The date 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies a leap forward, and it's where we find ourselves, with every futuristic development – primarily the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – seeming dystopian, or possibly even worse. (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 about this?

The answer, particularly regarding our sci-fi movies from years ago (or occasionally months ago) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of those warnings are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail implausible (if humanity is ultimately ravaged, we will almost certainly take the ape population with us). Others of them are visionary; others just resemble poor visual effects. But it's worth examining where different film-makers, ranging from masters to grunts, thought we'd be situated by now in the world's evolution. So let's take a look at some of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they contain any lessons to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this isn't promising. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Now, the bad stuff – regarding narrative and concerning garish film versions of a FPS video game – does not actually transpire for two more decades in the future, so even if we do discover a Martian gateway now, we could gain some time to avert true disaster. If we did discover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether Elon Musk would remain extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the discovery wasn't something he funded himself, enabling him to assert savior-like credit for humanity's expansion into the stars. This precedes we consider the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent transformations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for why, exactly we let Mars become a long-term aspiration for humanity. Be it in the director's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely act as a beacon of optimism. If anyone wants to close that questionable Martian property deal, perhaps they ought to begin with at least ensuring the fantasy version appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the goofiest quirks of the current MCU is the way it handles the various global cataclysms, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose events are largely undepicted in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a alarm clock perpetually set a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's years. So there's 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*, occur far away from Earth, and so seem quite unmoored from any concrete sense of time. But the poorer material is among the weakest 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 facing a great deal of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, including the related spin that actually, this confusing mess happening before our eyes is essential to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the real world that assertion will probably prove accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the more distant future of Earth, but the new trilogy that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, initiating its chronology around 2016. So by the time a pathogen that devastates the majority of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and also boosted the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s merely 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this virus propagates around the world and taking place in 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the real-world pandemic that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re now half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though clearly wounded by the still-spreading virus, was not wiped out, and our technology definitely hasn't been disabled. But this most pessimistic of the four modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a substantial downer to offer, suggesting that human and/or ape nature, however one defines each, will unavoidably lead to violent conflict, regardless of the work of the best-intentioned among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, even if those instincts are not held by the most. Right now, it seems difficult to dispute that, even though we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

Easily the best-known portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing celebrating its 100th anniversary. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists preside over the skyscrapers as laborers toil below the surface on the equipment that keep everything running. Affluent surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these enormous social gaps when he falls for Maria, an subterranean activist who preaches a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans builds a robot in her image, aiming to tear the entire Metropolis down in flames. Here, a robot designed to imitate a human isn't a tool of the elite, but someone who wants to witness their downfall; it's one element inverted by reality in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery relies on traditional manual labor, which seems like a perfect fusion of conservative disdain for “unskilled workers” and corporate enthusiasm for an tech boom. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's easy to picture a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The trickier, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the poor is bridged with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the possibility