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The year 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies a leap forward, a moment where we currently stand, with each science-fiction-style advancement – primarily the broad integration of artificial intelligence – seeming dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology would actually function a bit better?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm regarding this?

The answer, particularly concerning science fiction films made long ago (or occasionally recently) set in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of these prophecies are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but specifically far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably decimated, we will most likely bring down the primate species alongside us). Some of them are prescient; the rest just resemble bad visual effects. But it's worth examining where various directors, from geniuses to grunts, thought we'd be positioned by this time in our planet's development. Therefore, we shall 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'

Well, this isn't promising. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to establish a research facility. Now, the negative events – regarding plot and concerning over-the-top film versions of a FPS video game – doesn't really go down for another 20 years in the future, so even if we find a Martian gateway now, we might have a respite to avert true disaster. If we did discover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would remain super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the portal was not a thing he personally paid for, allowing him to assert messianic ownership for humanity's expansion into the stars. This precedes we consider the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting transformations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a good test case for the reasons we let Mars become a long-term hope for mankind. Be it in John Carpenter's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to serve as a symbol of optimism. If anyone wants to close that dubious red-planet real estate sale, perhaps they should start with first ensuring the fantasy version look good.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the strangest features of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the multiple world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a half-decade leap whose events are mostly undepicted in the films themselves; the movies have become like a alarm clock perpetually running a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's years. So there's a large assortment of Marvel stuff that fan sites clarify to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so seem pretty detached from our sense of time. However the poorer material is among the weakest the studio has ever produced: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on this stuff, we're facing a whole lot of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, including the accompanying spin that in truth, this nonsensical crap unfolding before our eyes is essential to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will probably turn out to be accurate.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series is located in the more distant future of Earth, but the new trilogy that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, starting its timeline approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out the majority of Earth’s people has done its damage, and simultaneously enhanced the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s merely 2026, with additional human indignities (and victories for apes) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this virus propagates globally and taking place in 2019, appears downright eerie in the aftermath of the real-world global health crisis that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; 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 wiped out, and our technology certainly has not been disabled. But this bleakest of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a substantial bummer in store, suggesting that human and/or ape nature, however one defines each, 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, even if those instincts don't represent the most. Currently, it seems difficult to dispute that, despite the fact that we probably should.

Metropolis

By far the most prominent depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to marking its centennial. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where rich businessmen lord over the towers as workers toil underground on the equipment that keep everything running. Affluent city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive class divisions when he falls for Maria, an underground organizer who preaches a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans builds a automaton in her image, aiming to tear the entire Metropolis down in flames. Here, a machine created to mimic a human isn't a tool of the elite, but someone who desires to see them destroyed; it's one element inverted by reality in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery depends on traditional human toil, which seems like a most logical fusion of conservative disdain for “the working class” and corporate zeal for an tech boom. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's simple to imagine a slightly less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The trickier, less plausible feat is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is spanned with compassion; rather than with concrete reforms. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the chance