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The date 2025 could appear more futuristic. Perhaps it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies a leap forward, a moment where we find ourselves, with each science-fiction-style advancement – chiefly the broad integration of artificial intelligence – appearing dystopian, or perhaps more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed dehumanizing technology would actually function more effectively?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm regarding this?

The response, at least regarding our sci-fi movies made long ago (or sometimes months ago) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of those warnings are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but specifically implausible (when mankind is inevitably ravaged, we will almost certainly take the ape population alongside us). Some of them are prescient; the rest just look like poor visual effects. But it's worth examining where different directors, from geniuses to journeymen, believed we'd be positioned by now in the world's development. So let's take a look a selection of the films that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and determine if they have anything to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this isn't promising. In the universe of the video game adaptation *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 people of Earth are able to set up a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – in terms of plot and concerning over-the-top film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually go down for two more decades in the future, so even if we do discover a Martian gateway now, we could gain a respite to avert catastrophe. Were we to discover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would still be super-psyched 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 ownership for mankind's expansion into the stars. That's before we consider the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting transformations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is closer to 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for why, exactly we let Mars become a long-term hope for humanity. Whether in John Carpenter's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely act as a beacon of hope. Should someone wishes to make that dubious Martian real estate sale, maybe they should start with first ensuring the fantasy version look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the goofiest quirks of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the multiple world-threatening cataclysms, including a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are mostly not shown in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a clock radio constantly running a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that fan sites helpfully explain to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so seem pretty detached from any concrete sense of time. However the poorer material is among the weakest Marvel has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce 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 actually, this confusing mess unfolding before our eyes is crucial to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the real world that assertion will probably prove correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series is located in the more distant future of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, starting its timeline around 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that knocks out most of Earth’s human population has run its course, and simultaneously boosted the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s only 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this virus spreads around the world and set in 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the wake of the actual pandemic that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; astonishingly, we’re now half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly wounded by the ongoing virus, hasn't been wiped out, and technological infrastructure definitely has not been knocked out. But this most pessimistic of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a significant downer to offer, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will unavoidably lead to warfare, no matter the work of the best-intentioned among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, although those drives are not held by the majority. Right now, it seems difficult to dispute that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

Metropolis

By far the best-known depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to celebrating its centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen preside over the skyscrapers as laborers toil below the surface on the machines that keep everything running. Rich city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these enormous social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground organizer who advocates for a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans builds a robot in her likeness, aiming to tear the entire Metropolis to ruin. Here, a machine designed to imitate a human isn't a tool of the elite, but an entity who desires to witness their downfall; it's one element inverted by reality in a future that otherwise seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology relies on old-fashioned manual labor, which appears as a perfect fusion of rightwing disdain for “unskilled workers” and corporate enthusiasm for an tech boom. It has not yet materialized, but it's simple to imagine a somewhat more utilitarian version of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a return to industrial production. The more complex, less plausible accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the have-nots is spanned with love; not so much with concrete reforms. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the possibility