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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 one step beyond, a moment where we currently stand, with each futuristic development – chiefly the broad integration of artificial intelligence – seeming dystopian, or possibly even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored anti-human technology would actually function a bit better?) Did no one warn us about this?

The answer, particularly regarding science fiction films made long ago (or sometimes recently) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of these prophecies are broadly applicable (global catastrophe) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably ravaged, we will almost certainly bring down the primate species with us). Some of them are prescient; others just look like bad green screen. But it's worth examining where various directors, from geniuses to journeymen, thought we'd be positioned by now in our planet's evolution. Therefore, we shall take a look at some of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they contain any lessons to impart.

Doom

Now, this isn't promising. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth can establish a scientific outpost. Now, the bad stuff – regarding plot and in terms of over-the-top cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – doesn't really go down for two more decades later, so even if we find a Martian gateway now, we could gain a respite to avert true disaster. If we did uncover a portal 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 instantly become dejected that the portal was not a thing he personally paid for, enabling him to assert messianic credit for mankind's expansion into the stars. This precedes we even get to the collection of Martian chromosomes and resulting transformations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is closer to 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for the reasons we allow Mars become a long-term hope for humanity. Whether in John Carpenter's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely act as a beacon of optimism. Should someone wishes to make that questionable Martian property deal, perhaps they ought to begin with first ensuring the fictional depiction appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the strangest features of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the multiple global disasters, including a half-decade leap whose events are mostly not shown in the films themselves; the movies have turned into a alarm clock constantly running a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's years. So there's a large assortment of Marvel stuff that fan sites clarify to be set in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so feel quite unmoored from our sense of time. However the bad stuff is some of the worst the studio has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're facing a whole lot of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the related spin that actually, this nonsensical crap unfolding in front of us is essential to future events. Even worse, in the real world that claim will probably prove correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, starting its timeline around 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that knocks out most of Earth’s people has done its damage, and also enhanced the intelligence of primates, it’s only 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this virus spreads around the world and set around 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual pandemic that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; astonishingly, we’re already six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though obviously impacted by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been annihilated, and technological infrastructure certainly hasn't been disabled. Yet this bleakest of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a substantial downer to offer, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines either, will unavoidably lead to warfare, no matter the work of the most well-meaning among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, although those instincts are not held by the majority. Currently, it feels difficult to dispute that, even though we ought to try.

Metropolis

By far the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing marking its centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where rich businessmen preside over the skyscrapers as workers toil below the surface on the equipment that power the city. Rich surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these massive class divisions when he falls for Maria, an subterranean activist who preaches a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans builds a automaton in her likeness, aiming to tear the entire Metropolis down in flames. Here, a machine designed to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but someone who wants to witness their downfall; it's a component flipped by the modern world in a future that in other ways seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery relies on traditional manual labor, which appears as a most logical fusion of conservative disdain for “the working class” and corporate enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's simple to picture a slightly more utilitarian version of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a resurgence to industrial production. The trickier, harder-to-imagine feat is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is spanned with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the possibility