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The year 2025 could appear more futuristic. Maybe it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 represents one step beyond, a moment where we currently stand, with each science-fiction-style advancement – primarily the broad integration of artificial intelligence – appearing dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored anti-human technology would actually operate more effectively?) Did no one warn us about this?

The response, at least concerning our sci-fi movies from years ago (or sometimes months ago) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of those warnings are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is ultimately decimated, we will most likely take the primate species alongside us). Others of them are prescient; others just resemble bad green screen. Yet it remains valuable to explore where various directors, ranging from masters to grunts, believed we'd be situated by now in the world's evolution. Therefore, we shall take a look a selection of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and determine if they contain any lessons to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this doesn't bode well. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to set up a scientific outpost. Now, the bad stuff – in terms of plot and in terms of garish film versions of a FPS video game – does not actually transpire for another 20 years in the future, so should we find a Martian gateway this year, we could gain a respite to avert true disaster. If we did uncover a portal to an ancient 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 disheartened that the discovery was not a thing he funded himself, allowing him to claim messianic ownership for humanity's expansion into the stars. This precedes we consider the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent transformations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for the reasons we let Mars become a stretch-goal hope for humanity. Be it in John Carpenter's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to act as a symbol of hope. If anyone wishes to make that questionable Martian real estate sale, perhaps they ought to begin with at least ensuring the fictional depiction appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the goofiest quirks of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the various world-threatening cataclysms, including a half-decade leap whose occurrences are largely not shown in the films themselves; the films have become like a alarm clock perpetually running a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a whole bunch of MCU content that various wikis clarify to be set in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so seem pretty detached from our sense of time. But 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 wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the accompanying spin that in truth, this confusing mess unfolding in front of us is crucial 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-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, initiating its chronology around 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that knocks out most of Earth’s people has run its course, and also boosted the intelligence of apes, it’s merely 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 around 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; astonishingly, we’re already six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously impacted by the ongoing virus, hasn't been annihilated, and technological infrastructure certainly hasn't been disabled. But this bleakest of the four modern *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a substantial downer in store, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines each, will unavoidably result in warfare, regardless of the work of the most well-meaning among us. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, although those drives are not held by the majority. Right now, it feels hard to argue with that, even though we probably should.

The Silent Classic

By far the best-known portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing celebrating its centennial. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen lord over the towers as laborers toil below the surface on the machines that power the city. Affluent city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these enormous social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean organizer who advocates for a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans creates a robot in her image, aiming to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a robot created to imitate a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who wants to see them destroyed; it's one element inverted by the modern world in a future that otherwise appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery depends on old-fashioned human toil, which seems like a most logical fusion of conservative disdain for “unskilled workers” and business zeal for an tech boom. It has not yet materialized, but it's simple to imagine a slightly less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a return to manufacturing. The more complex, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the poor is bridged with love; not so much with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the chance