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The year 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 represents one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style development – primarily the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – appearing bleak, or possibly more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed anti-human technology might operate a bit better?) Did no one warn us regarding this?

The response, at least regarding our sci-fi movies made long ago (or occasionally months ago) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of those warnings are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably decimated, we will most likely bring down the primate species alongside us). Some of them are visionary; the rest just look like bad visual effects. Yet it remains valuable to explore where different film-makers, from geniuses to journeymen, thought we'd be situated by this time in our planet's development. Therefore, we shall examine a selection of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they contain any lessons to teach us.

Doom

Now, this isn't promising. According to 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 can set up a research facility. Currently, the negative events – regarding plot and concerning over-the-top cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – does not actually go down for two more decades later, so even if we do discover a Martian gateway now, we might have some time to avert catastrophe. Were we to discover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would remain extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the portal was not a thing he personally paid for, allowing him to claim messianic credit for mankind's journey to the cosmos. This precedes we even get to the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and resulting mutations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for why, exactly we let Mars become a stretch-goal hope for humanity. Whether in John Carpenter's cheap-looking 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 doesn't tend to serve as a beacon of optimism. If anyone wishes to make that dubious red-planet property deal, perhaps they should start with first making the fictional depiction look good.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the goofiest quirks of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the various world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a half-decade leap whose occurrences are mostly undepicted in the films themselves; the movies have become like a clock radio constantly running a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that fan sites clarify to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, take place distant from Earth, and so seem pretty unmoored from our sense of time. But the bad stuff is some of the worst the studio has ever produced: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're in for a whole lot of annoying stagnation in 2026, along with 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 assertion will probably prove accurate.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, starting its chronology around 2016. So by the time a pathogen that devastates most of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously boosted the intelligence of primates, it’s only 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this virus spreads globally and taking place around 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the wake of the real-world global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; astonishingly, we’re already six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly wounded by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been wiped out, and our technology definitely hasn't been knocked out. Yet this most pessimistic of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a significant bummer to offer, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will unavoidably result in violent conflict, regardless of the efforts of the most well-meaning 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 majority. Right now, it seems difficult to dispute that, despite the fact that we probably should.

Metropolis

By far the most prominent depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing marking its centennial. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists lord over the towers as workers work tirelessly underground on the equipment that power the city. Affluent surface resident Freder, son 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 two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans builds a automaton in her likeness, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. Here, a machine created to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but someone who desires to see them destroyed; it's one element flipped by reality in a future that in other ways seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery relies on old-fashioned human toil, which appears as a most logical fusion of conservative contempt for “the working class” and corporate zeal for an AI bubble. It has not yet come to pass, but it's simple to picture a somewhat less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a return to manufacturing. The more complex, less plausible accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the poor is bridged with love; rather than with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the possibility