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The date 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies one step beyond, a moment where we find ourselves, with every futuristic advancement – primarily the broad integration of AI – seeming dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed dehumanizing technology might function more effectively?) Did no one warn us about this?

The answer, particularly regarding science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally months ago) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of those warnings are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but specifically far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably decimated, we will most likely bring down the primate species with us). Others of them are prescient; the rest just resemble bad green screen. But it's valuable to explore where different directors, from geniuses to journeymen, believed we'd be situated by now in the world's evolution. So let's examine a selection of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they have anything to impart.

Doom

Well, this doesn't bode well. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth can establish a scientific outpost. Currently, the negative events – in terms of plot and in terms of over-the-top cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really go down for another 20 years in the future, so even if we do discover a portal to Mars now, we might have some time to avert true disaster. If we did uncover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether Elon Musk would remain super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the portal wasn't something he personally paid for, enabling him to assert messianic ownership for mankind's expansion to the cosmos. This precedes we consider the collection of Martian chromosomes and resulting transformations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for the reasons we allow Mars serve as a long-term aspiration for humanity. Whether in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi 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 optimism. Should someone wishes to make that questionable red-planet real estate sale, perhaps they should start with first making the fictional depiction appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the goofiest quirks of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the multiple global cataclysms, including a half-decade leap whose events are largely not shown in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a alarm clock perpetually running a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a whole bunch of MCU content that fan sites helpfully explain to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so seem pretty unmoored from our sense of time. However the bad stuff is some of the worst Marvel has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're in for a great deal of annoying stagnation in 2026, including the related narrative that in truth, this confusing mess happening in front of us is essential to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that assertion will likely prove correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the more distant 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 around 2016. So by the time a pathogen that devastates most of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of primates, it’s only 2026, with additional human indignities (and simian triumphs) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this contagion spreads globally and taking place around 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the wake of the real-world pandemic that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; astonishingly, we’re now six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though obviously wounded by the still-spreading virus, was not annihilated, and technological infrastructure certainly hasn't been disabled. But this bleakest of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a substantial bummer in store, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will unavoidably result in warfare, regardless of the efforts of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, even if those instincts are not held by the majority. Currently, it seems difficult to dispute that, despite the fact that we probably should.

Metropolis

Easily the most prominent depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing marking its centennial. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where rich businessmen lord over the towers as laborers toil underground on the machines that keep everything running. Rich city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these enormous class divisions when he falls for Maria, an underground activist who preaches a reconciliation of the two halves 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 robot created to imitate a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who wants to witness their downfall; it's one element inverted by reality in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology relies on old-fashioned human toil, which seems like a most logical fusion of rightwing disdain for “the working class” and corporate zeal for an tech boom. It has not yet come to pass, but it's simple to imagine a slightly more utilitarian version of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The trickier, less plausible accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is bridged with compassion; rather than with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the possibility