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The date 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 represents a leap forward, a moment where we currently stand, with each science-fiction-style development – primarily the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – seeming dystopian, or possibly more grim. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed anti-human technology would actually operate more effectively?) Didn't anyone warn us about this?

The response, at least concerning science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally recently) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of these prophecies are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (when mankind is ultimately decimated, we will most likely bring down the primate species with us). Others of them are visionary; others just look like bad visual effects. But it's valuable to explore where various directors, from geniuses to grunts, believed we'd be positioned by this time in the world's development. So let's examine at some of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and determine if they have anything to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, 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 discovers a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – regarding narrative and concerning over-the-top film versions of a FPS video game – does not actually go down for two more decades later, so should we find a portal to Mars now, we might have a respite to avoid catastrophe. Were we to uncover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether Elon Musk would still be super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the portal was not a thing he funded himself, allowing him to claim messianic credit for mankind's expansion into the stars. That's before we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting mutations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a good test case for why, exactly we allow Mars become a stretch-goal hope for humanity. Whether in John Carpenter's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely act as a symbol of hope. If anyone wishes to close that questionable red-planet property deal, perhaps they ought to begin with at least ensuring the fictional depiction look good.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the goofiest quirks of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the multiple world-threatening cataclysms, including a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are largely undepicted in the films themselves; the movies have become like a clock radio constantly running a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. So there's a large assortment of MCU content that various wikis clarify to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated romp *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so feel pretty unmoored 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 farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're in for a whole lot of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, including the accompanying spin that in truth, this nonsensical crap happening in front of us is crucial to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the actual world that assertion will likely turn out to be correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the further-flung future of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, initiating its chronology around 2016. Thus, when a virus that devastates the majority of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and also boosted the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s only 2026, with additional human indignities (and victories for apes) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this contagion spreads globally and taking place around 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual pandemic that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; astonishingly, we’re now six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though clearly impacted by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been wiped out, and our technology certainly hasn't been disabled. Yet this most pessimistic of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a significant downer in store, implying that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as each, will unavoidably result in violent conflict, regardless of the efforts of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, although those drives don't represent the most. Currently, it seems hard to dispute that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

By far the best-known depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where rich businessmen lord over the towers as laborers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that power the city. Affluent city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these massive social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean organizer who preaches a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans builds a automaton in her likeness, hoping to bring the entire Metropolis down in flames. Here, a machine created to mimic a human isn't a tool of the elite, but someone who wants to witness their downfall; it's a component inverted by reality in a future that in other ways appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery relies on traditional manual labor, which appears as a perfect fusion of conservative disdain for “the working class” and corporate zeal for an AI bubble. It has not yet materialized, but it's simple to picture a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a resurgence to manufacturing. The more complex, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the poor is bridged with love; not so much with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the chance