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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, and it's where we find ourselves, with every science-fiction-style advancement – primarily the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – seeming dystopian, or possibly more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed anti-human technology might function more effectively?) Did no one warn us about this?

The response, particularly regarding science fiction films from years ago (or sometimes months ago) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of these prophecies are broadly applicable (global catastrophe) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is ultimately decimated, we will almost certainly bring down the primate species with us). Some of them are visionary; others just resemble poor green screen. But it's worth examining where various film-makers, ranging from masters to journeymen, thought we'd be positioned by this time in the world's development. Therefore, we shall take a look at some of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they have anything to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this isn't promising. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to establish a research facility. Now, the negative events – regarding narrative and in terms of over-the-top cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – does not actually go down for another 20 years in the future, so should we find a Martian gateway this year, we could gain some time to avoid catastrophe. If we did uncover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would still be extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the discovery wasn't something he personally paid for, enabling him to assert savior-like ownership for mankind's expansion into the stars. This precedes we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting transformations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, not to be confused with the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for why, exactly we allow Mars become a stretch-goal hope for humanity. Whether in John Carpenter's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely act as a symbol of hope. If anyone wishes to make that dubious red-planet real estate sale, perhaps they should start with first ensuring the fantasy version look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the goofiest quirks of the current MCU is the way it handles the various world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose events are mostly not shown in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a alarm clock perpetually set a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a large assortment of Marvel stuff that various wikis clarify to be taking place in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, take place distant from Earth, and so seem quite detached from our sense of time. But the poorer material is among the weakest the studio has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're facing a great deal of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, including the accompanying spin that in truth, this confusing mess happening before our eyes is crucial to future events. More troublingly, in the actual world that assertion will probably turn out to be correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is set 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, starting its chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out the majority of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously boosted the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s merely 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this contagion propagates globally and taking place around 2019, appears downright eerie in the wake of the real-world global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re already six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously wounded by the ongoing virus, was not wiped out, and technological infrastructure definitely hasn't been knocked out. Yet this bleakest of the four modern *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a significant bummer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will inevitably result in warfare, regardless of the efforts of the best-intentioned among us. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, even if those instincts don't represent the most. Currently, it seems hard to dispute that, even though we ought to try.

Metropolis

Easily the best-known portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where rich businessmen lord over the towers as workers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that keep everything running. Affluent surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these massive class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean activist who advocates for a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans creates a automaton in her likeness, aiming to bring the whole of Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a robot designed to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but someone who desires to witness their downfall; it's a component inverted by the modern world in a future that in other ways seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology depends on traditional human toil, which seems like a perfect fusion of conservative disdain for “the working class” and business enthusiasm for an tech boom. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's easy to picture a slightly more utilitarian version of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The more complex, harder-to-imagine feat is the ending of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the poor is bridged with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the chance