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The year 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 represents a leap forward, and it's where we find ourselves, with each futuristic advancement – chiefly the widespread adoption of AI – seeming bleak, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed dehumanizing technology might operate a bit better?) Did no one warn us regarding this?

The response, particularly concerning science fiction films made long ago (or sometimes recently) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of these prophecies are broadly applicable (global catastrophe) but in detail implausible (when mankind is ultimately ravaged, we will most likely bring down the primate species with us). Some of them are visionary; others just resemble bad green screen. Yet it remains valuable to explore where different directors, from geniuses to journeymen, believed we'd be positioned by this time in our planet's development. Therefore, we shall examine a selection of the films that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and see if they have anything to teach us.

Doom

Well, this isn't promising. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Now, the bad stuff – regarding plot and concerning garish cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – does not actually transpire for two more decades in the future, so should we do discover a Martian gateway this year, we might have some time to avert true disaster. If we did discover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether Elon Musk would remain super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the discovery was not a thing he funded himself, enabling him to assert messianic ownership for mankind's expansion into the stars. This precedes we consider the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and subsequent transformations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for why, exactly we allow Mars become a long-term aspiration for humanity. Whether in John Carpenter's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely serve as a beacon of hope. If anyone wishes to make that dubious Martian real estate sale, maybe they ought to begin with at least ensuring the fictional depiction look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the strangest features of the current MCU is how to account for the multiple global disasters, including a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are mostly not shown in the movies themselves; the films have turned into a alarm clock perpetually running a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. 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 underappreciated adventure *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so feel pretty detached from our sense of time. But the bad stuff is some of the worst Marvel has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on this stuff, we're facing a whole lot of frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the accompanying spin that in truth, this confusing mess happening before our eyes is essential to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the actual world that claim will probably prove correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the further-flung future of Earth, but the new trilogy that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, starting its chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out the majority of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and simultaneously boosted the intelligence of primates, it’s only 2026, with additional human indignities (and victories for apes) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this contagion spreads globally and taking place around 2019, appears downright eerie in the aftermath of the actual global health crisis that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re now six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though clearly wounded by the ongoing virus, hasn't been wiped out, and our technology definitely hasn't been knocked out. But this most pessimistic of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a substantial downer in store, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will inevitably result in violent conflict, no matter the efforts of the most well-meaning among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, even if those drives are not held by the majority. Currently, it seems hard to dispute that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

Easily the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie close to celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen lord over the skyscrapers as workers work tirelessly underground on the equipment that keep everything running. Rich city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these enormous social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground activist who advocates for a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans creates a automaton in her image, hoping to bring the entire Metropolis to ruin. Here, a machine designed to mimic a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who wants to witness their downfall; it's one element inverted by reality in a future that in other ways appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery relies on traditional manual labor, which seems like a most logical fusion of conservative disdain for “the working class” and corporate zeal for an tech boom. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's simple to picture a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a resurgence to manufacturing. The trickier, less plausible feat is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is spanned with compassion; rather than with concrete reforms. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the chance