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The date 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies a leap forward, and it's where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style advancement – primarily the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – appearing bleak, or perhaps more grim. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed anti-human technology might function a bit better?) Did no one sound the alarm about this?

The answer, at least regarding science fiction films from years ago (or sometimes months ago) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of those warnings are broadly applicable (global catastrophe) but specifically far-fetched (when mankind is inevitably decimated, we will most likely take the primate species alongside us). Some of them are visionary; others just look like bad green screen. Yet it remains worth examining where different film-makers, from geniuses to grunts, believed we'd be situated by now in our planet's evolution. So let's examine a selection of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and see if they contain any lessons to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this isn't promising. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to set up a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – in terms of plot and in terms of over-the-top film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually transpire for two more decades later, so even if we find a Martian gateway this year, we could gain some time to avoid catastrophe. If we did uncover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether Elon Musk would remain super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the portal wasn't something he personally paid for, allowing him to claim savior-like credit for mankind's journey into the stars. This precedes we consider the collection of Martian chromosomes and subsequent mutations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is closer to 2046, not to be confused with the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for why, exactly we allow Mars become a long-term aspiration for mankind. Whether in the director's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to act as a beacon of optimism. Should someone wants to close that dubious Martian real estate sale, perhaps they ought to begin with first ensuring the fictional depiction look good.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the goofiest quirks of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the various world-threatening disasters, including a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are largely not shown in the films themselves; the films have become like a alarm clock perpetually set a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. So there's a large assortment of MCU content that fan sites clarify to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, take place distant from Earth, and so feel pretty detached from any concrete sense of time. However the bad stuff is among the weakest the studio has ever produced: 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 in for a whole lot of annoying stagnation in 2026, including the related narrative that in truth, this nonsensical crap happening before our eyes is essential to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the real world that claim will likely prove correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, starting its timeline approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s people has done its damage, and also enhanced the intelligence of apes, it’s merely 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this virus spreads globally and set around 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the wake of the actual global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; astonishingly, we’re already six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously wounded by the still-spreading virus, was not annihilated, and our technology definitely has not been knocked out. But this bleakest of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a significant bummer to offer, implying that human and/or ape nature, however one defines either, will inevitably result in warfare, no matter the efforts of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, although those instincts are not held by the most. Currently, it seems difficult to argue with that, even though we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

Easily the best-known portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to celebrating its centennial. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists preside over the skyscrapers as workers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that power the city. Rich surface resident Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean organizer who advocates for a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans creates a automaton in her image, hoping to tear the entire Metropolis to ruin. Here, a robot designed to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but someone who desires to see them destroyed; it's a component flipped by the modern world in a future that otherwise seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery depends on old-fashioned human toil, which seems like a perfect fusion of conservative 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 somewhat less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a return to industrial production. The trickier, less plausible accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is spanned with love; not so much with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the possibility