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The year 2025 might sound more futuristic. Perhaps it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 represents one step beyond, and it's where we find ourselves, with each science-fiction-style development – chiefly the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – appearing bleak, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored anti-human technology would actually operate more effectively?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm regarding this?

The answer, particularly concerning our sci-fi movies from years ago (or occasionally recently) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but specifically far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably decimated, we will most likely take the ape population with us). Others of them are visionary; the rest just resemble poor visual effects. Yet it remains worth examining where various directors, ranging from masters to grunts, believed we'd be positioned by now in the world's development. So let's take a look at some of the films that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and determine if they have anything to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to set up a scientific outpost. Currently, the bad stuff – in terms of narrative and in terms of garish film versions of a FPS video game – does not actually transpire for two more decades in the future, so should we do discover a Martian gateway now, we could gain a respite to avert catastrophe. Were we to uncover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would remain extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the discovery wasn't something he funded himself, enabling him to claim savior-like ownership for mankind's journey to the cosmos. This precedes we consider the collection of Martian chromosomes and subsequent transformations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for the reasons we allow Mars become a stretch-goal aspiration for mankind. Whether in John Carpenter's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to act as a symbol of hope. If anyone wants to make that questionable Martian property deal, perhaps they should start with first ensuring the fictional depiction look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the strangest features of the present MCU is how to account for the multiple world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose events are largely undepicted in the films themselves; the movies have turned into a clock radio constantly running a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of MCU content that fan sites helpfully explain to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so feel quite unmoored from our sense of time. But the bad stuff is some of the worst the studio has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by this stuff, we're facing a great deal of frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the related narrative that in truth, this nonsensical crap unfolding in front of us is crucial to future events. Even worse, in the real world that claim will probably turn out to be correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, initiating its chronology approximately 2016. Thus, when a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and simultaneously enhanced the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s only 2026, with additional human indignities (and victories for apes) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this contagion spreads globally and set around 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the real-world pandemic that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; astonishingly, we’re already six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though clearly wounded by the still-spreading virus, was not wiped out, and technological infrastructure definitely has not been disabled. Yet this most pessimistic of the four modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a significant bummer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will inevitably lead to violent conflict, no matter the work of the best-intentioned among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, although those drives don't represent the majority. Right now, it seems hard to argue with that, even though we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

Easily the best-known depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to marking its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists preside over the skyscrapers as laborers toil underground on the machines that power the city. Rich city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive social gaps when he falls for Maria, an subterranean activist who preaches a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans builds a automaton in her likeness, aiming to tear the whole of Metropolis to ruin. Here, a machine designed to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but someone who wants to witness their downfall; it's a component inverted by the modern world in a future that otherwise appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology depends on old-fashioned manual labor, which seems like a most logical fusion of conservative disdain for “the working class” and business zeal for an tech boom. It has not yet materialized, but it's easy to imagine a slightly more utilitarian version 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 wealthy and the poor is spanned with love; not so much with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the chance