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The date 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style development – primarily the broad integration of AI – appearing dystopian, or possibly even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed dehumanizing technology would actually operate a bit better?) Didn't anyone warn us about this?

The response, at least regarding science fiction films made long ago (or sometimes recently) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of these prophecies are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but in detail implausible (if humanity is inevitably ravaged, we will most likely take the ape population alongside us). Others of them are prescient; the rest just resemble poor green screen. But it's valuable to explore where various film-makers, ranging from masters to journeymen, believed we'd be positioned by now in our planet's development. 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 doesn't bode well. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – regarding plot and in terms of garish cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually go down for two more decades in the future, so even if we find a Martian gateway this year, we could gain a respite to avoid catastrophe. If we did discover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would still be extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the discovery was not a thing he funded himself, allowing him to assert savior-like ownership for humanity's expansion to the cosmos. This precedes we consider the collection of Martian chromosomes and resulting transformations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for why, exactly we allow Mars serve as a stretch-goal aspiration for humanity. Whether in the director's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely serve as a symbol of optimism. Should someone wishes to close that dubious Martian property deal, maybe they ought to begin with at least ensuring the fictional depiction appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the goofiest quirks of the current MCU is the way it handles the various world-threatening cataclysms, including a five-year time-jump whose events are mostly not shown in the films themselves; the films have become like a clock radio constantly set a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a large assortment of Marvel stuff 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*, take place distant from Earth, and so feel quite detached from any concrete sense of time. However the bad stuff is some of the worst the studio has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're in for a great deal of frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the accompanying narrative that in truth, this nonsensical crap happening in front of us is essential to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will likely turn out to be accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, starting its timeline around 2016. So by the time a pathogen that knocks out the majority of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s only 2026, with further human indignities (and simian triumphs) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this contagion propagates globally and taking place around 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; astonishingly, we’re now half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though clearly wounded by the ongoing virus, was not annihilated, and our technology definitely has not been knocked out. But this most pessimistic of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a significant bummer in store, implying that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as either, will inevitably lead to violent conflict, no matter the work of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, even if those drives are not held by the most. Right now, it feels hard to argue with that, even though we probably should.

Metropolis

By far the best-known depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen preside over the towers as laborers toil below the surface on the equipment that power the city. Affluent city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these enormous social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean activist who advocates for a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans builds a robot in her likeness, 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 ruling corporate class, but someone who desires to witness their downfall; it's one element inverted by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology relies on old-fashioned human toil, which seems like a perfect union of conservative contempt for “unskilled workers” and corporate enthusiasm for an tech boom. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's simple to imagine a somewhat less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a return to industrial production. The trickier, harder-to-imagine feat is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the haves and the poor is spanned with love; not so much with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the chance