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The year 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 represents a leap forward, and it's where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style advancement – primarily the broad integration of artificial intelligence – appearing bleak, or perhaps even worse. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed dehumanizing technology would actually function more effectively?) Didn't anyone warn us regarding this?

The response, particularly concerning science fiction films from years ago (or sometimes recently) 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 inevitably decimated, we will almost certainly take the primate species alongside us). Others of them are visionary; others just resemble bad green screen. But it's valuable to explore where different directors, ranging from masters to journeymen, believed we'd be positioned by this time in the world's evolution. Therefore, we shall examine at some of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they contain any lessons to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this isn't promising. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can set up a scientific outpost. Now, 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 another 20 years in the future, so should we do discover a Martian gateway this year, we could gain a respite to avert true disaster. Were we to discover a passageway 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 dejected that the portal wasn't something he personally paid for, enabling him to claim messianic credit for humanity's journey to the cosmos. That's before we consider the collection of Martian chromosomes and resulting mutations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for the reasons we let Mars serve as a stretch-goal aspiration for mankind. Be it in the director's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to act as a beacon of hope. If anyone wants to make that dubious red-planet real estate sale, maybe they should start with first ensuring the fictional depiction appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the strangest features of the present MCU is how to account for the multiple global disasters, including a half-decade leap whose events are mostly not shown in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a clock radio constantly set a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a whole bunch 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 adventure *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so feel pretty detached from any concrete sense of time. But the poorer material is among the weakest the studio has ever produced: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on this stuff, we're facing a whole lot of frustrating stagnation in 2026, along with the related spin that actually, this confusing mess unfolding before our eyes is essential to future events. Even worse, in the real world that claim will likely prove accurate.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, starting its chronology around 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s people has done its damage, and also enhanced the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s only 2026, with further human indignities (and victories for apes) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this virus propagates around the world and taking place around 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual pandemic that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; astonishingly, we’re now half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though obviously wounded by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been wiped out, and our technology definitely hasn't been knocked out. But this bleakest of the four modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a substantial downer in store, implying that human and/or ape nature, however one defines each, will inevitably result in warfare, no matter the efforts of the most well-meaning among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, although those drives are not held by the most. Currently, it feels hard to dispute that, even though we ought to try.

Metropolis

By far the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing marking its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where rich businessmen lord over the towers as workers work tirelessly underground on the machines that power the city. Rich city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these massive class divisions when he falls for Maria, an subterranean activist who preaches a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans builds a automaton in her image, hoping to tear the entire Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a robot designed to imitate a human isn't a tool of the elite, but someone who desires to witness their downfall; it's one element flipped by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology depends on traditional manual labor, which seems like a perfect fusion of rightwing contempt for “unskilled workers” and corporate enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It has not yet come to pass, but it's easy to picture a slightly less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a return to industrial production. The more complex, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the have-nots is bridged with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the possibility