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The date 2025 could appear more futuristic. Perhaps it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 represents one step beyond, and it's where we find ourselves, with every futuristic development – chiefly the broad integration of artificial intelligence – appearing dystopian, or perhaps more grim. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology would actually function a bit better?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm about this?

The response, at least regarding our sci-fi movies made long ago (or sometimes recently) set in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of these prophecies are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but in detail implausible (when mankind is ultimately decimated, we will almost certainly take the ape population alongside us). Others of them are visionary; others just resemble poor green screen. Yet it remains worth examining where different film-makers, ranging from masters to journeymen, thought we'd be situated by now in the world's development. So let's take a look at some of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they have anything to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Now, the bad stuff – in terms of narrative and concerning garish film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really go down for another 20 years later, so even if we find a Martian gateway this year, we could gain a respite to avert true disaster. Were we to uncover a portal to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether Elon Musk would remain super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the portal was not a thing he funded himself, enabling him to assert messianic credit for mankind's expansion into the stars. That's before we even get to the collection of Martian chromosomes and subsequent transformations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for why, exactly we let Mars become a long-term hope for mankind. Whether in the director's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely act as a symbol of optimism. Should someone wants to make that questionable Martian real estate sale, perhaps they should start with first ensuring the fictional depiction appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the strangest features of the current MCU is the way it handles the multiple world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose events are mostly undepicted in the films themselves; the films have become like a clock radio perpetually set a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of MCU content that various wikis helpfully explain to be set in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so feel pretty detached from our sense of time. But the bad stuff is among the weakest the studio has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're in for a whole lot of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the accompanying spin that actually, this nonsensical crap happening before our eyes is crucial to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the actual world that assertion will probably prove accurate.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is located in the further-flung future of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, initiating its chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a pathogen that knocks out most of Earth’s people has done its damage, and simultaneously enhanced the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s only 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this virus spreads around the world and set in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual pandemic that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; astonishingly, we’re already six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though obviously wounded by the ongoing virus, hasn't been wiped out, and technological infrastructure certainly has not been knocked out. Yet this bleakest of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a substantial bummer to offer, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines each, will inevitably result in warfare, regardless of the efforts of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, even if those instincts don't represent the majority. Right now, it feels hard to dispute that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

Easily the most prominent depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing marking its 100th anniversary. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists lord over the towers as workers work tirelessly underground on the machines that keep everything running. Affluent city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these enormous social gaps when he falls for Maria, an subterranean organizer who advocates for a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans builds a robot in her image, hoping to tear the entire Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a machine designed to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but an entity who desires to see them destroyed; it's one element flipped by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology relies on traditional manual labor, 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 imagine a slightly more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a resurgence to industrial production. The more complex, less plausible accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the have-nots is bridged with love; rather than with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the possibility