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The date 2025 might sound more futuristic. Perhaps it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 represents one step beyond, and it's where we find ourselves, with every science-fiction-style advancement – primarily the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – appearing bleak, or possibly even worse. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed anti-human technology might function more effectively?) Did no one warn us regarding this?

The answer, at least regarding our sci-fi movies made long ago (or sometimes recently) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail implausible (if humanity is inevitably decimated, we will most likely bring down the primate species with us). Some of them are visionary; others just resemble poor visual effects. Yet it remains valuable to explore where various film-makers, from geniuses to grunts, thought we'd be situated by this time in the world's evolution. Therefore, we shall take a look at some of the films that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they have anything to impart.

Doom

Now, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth can establish a scientific outpost. Currently, the negative events – in terms of plot and concerning over-the-top cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually transpire for two more decades in the future, so even if we do discover a Martian gateway this year, we could gain a respite to avert catastrophe. Were we to discover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether Elon Musk would remain super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the discovery wasn't something he funded himself, enabling him to claim messianic credit for mankind's journey into the stars. That's before we consider the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and resulting mutations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for why, exactly we allow Mars become a long-term aspiration for mankind. Whether in the director's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely act as a symbol of hope. Should someone wishes to close that questionable Martian real estate sale, perhaps they ought to begin with first ensuring the fictional depiction appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the strangest features of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the multiple world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a half-decade leap whose occurrences are mostly not shown in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a alarm clock constantly set a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that various wikis helpfully explain to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated romp *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so feel quite detached from any concrete sense of time. But the poorer material is some of the worst 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 this stuff, we're in for a whole lot of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, including the accompanying narrative that in truth, this nonsensical crap unfolding before our eyes is essential to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the real world that claim will likely turn out to be accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the more distant future 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 approximately 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that knocks out most of Earth’s human population has run its course, and also enhanced the intelligence of primates, it’s merely 2026, with further human indignities (and victories for apes) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this virus spreads globally and set in 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the wake of the actual global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re now six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously impacted by the ongoing virus, was not annihilated, and our technology definitely hasn't been disabled. Yet this most pessimistic of the four modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a substantial bummer in store, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably result in warfare, no matter the efforts of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, although those instincts don't represent the most. Right now, it seems difficult to dispute that, even though we ought to try.

Metropolis

By far the most prominent depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to marking its centennial. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where wealthy industrialists lord over the skyscrapers as laborers work tirelessly underground on the equipment that power the city. Affluent surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these enormous social gaps when he falls for Maria, an subterranean organizer who advocates for a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans creates a robot in her image, hoping to bring the entire Metropolis to ruin. Here, a robot created to mimic a human isn't a tool of the elite, but someone who desires to see them destroyed; it's a component flipped by reality in a future that otherwise seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery relies on traditional manual labor, which appears as a perfect union of conservative contempt for “the working class” and business zeal for an tech boom. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's simple to imagine a slightly less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a return to industrial production. The trickier, harder-to-imagine feat is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the poor is bridged with love; rather than with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the possibility