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The date 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies a leap forward, a moment where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style development – primarily the widespread adoption of AI – appearing bleak, or possibly even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology would actually operate more effectively?) Did no one warn us regarding this?

The answer, particularly concerning our sci-fi movies from years ago (or sometimes recently) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of those warnings are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but specifically far-fetched (if humanity is ultimately ravaged, we will most likely take the primate species with us). Some of them are prescient; others just resemble poor green screen. Yet it remains valuable to explore where various film-makers, ranging from masters to grunts, thought we'd be situated by now in the world's development. So let's take a look at some of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and see if they have anything to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this doesn't bode well. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can establish a research facility. Currently, the negative events – regarding plot and concerning garish film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually transpire for two more decades later, so even if we find a portal to Mars now, we could gain a respite to avert true disaster. If we did uncover a portal to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would remain extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the discovery was not a thing he funded himself, enabling him to claim savior-like ownership for mankind's expansion to the cosmos. That's before we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting mutations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for the reasons we let Mars become a stretch-goal aspiration for humanity. Be it 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 optimism. Should someone wants to close that questionable Martian property deal, maybe they ought to begin with at least making the fantasy version look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the goofiest quirks of the present MCU is the way it handles the various world-threatening cataclysms, including a half-decade leap whose occurrences are largely undepicted in the films themselves; the movies have become like a alarm clock constantly set a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a whole bunch 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 feel pretty unmoored from any concrete 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*. Judging by these examples, we're facing a whole lot of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the accompanying spin that in truth, this confusing mess happening in front of us is essential to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the real world that claim will probably prove accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

The majority of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, starting its timeline approximately 2016. So by the time a pathogen that devastates the majority of Earth’s human population has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of primates, it’s merely 2026, with additional human indignities (and victories for apes) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this virus propagates globally and set in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual global health crisis that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re now six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though obviously wounded by the ongoing virus, was not annihilated, and technological infrastructure certainly hasn't been disabled. But this most pessimistic of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a substantial bummer in store, suggesting that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as either, will inevitably result in violent conflict, regardless of the work of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, even if those instincts are not held by the majority. Currently, it seems hard to argue with that, even though we ought to try.

Metropolis

Easily the most prominent depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing marking its centennial. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen lord over the skyscrapers as workers work tirelessly below the surface on the equipment that power the city. Rich city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these massive social gaps when he falls for Maria, an subterranean activist who preaches a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans creates a robot in her likeness, hoping to tear the entire Metropolis to ruin. Here, a robot designed to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but someone who wants to witness their downfall; it's one element flipped by the modern world in a future that in other ways appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery depends on old-fashioned human toil, which seems like a perfect union of rightwing disdain for “the working class” and corporate zeal for an AI bubble. It has not yet materialized, but it's easy to imagine a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a return to manufacturing. The more complex, less plausible accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the haves and the poor is spanned with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the chance