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The date 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies a leap forward, and it's where we find ourselves, with every science-fiction-style advancement – chiefly the broad integration of AI – seeming dystopian, or perhaps more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology might operate more effectively?) Did no one sound the alarm regarding this?

The response, particularly concerning science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally recently) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of these prophecies are broadly applicable (global catastrophe) but in detail far-fetched (when mankind is inevitably ravaged, we will most likely bring down the ape population alongside us). Others of them are prescient; the rest just look like poor 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 development. So let's examine a selection of the films that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and see if they have anything to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this isn't promising. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can establish a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – in terms of narrative and concerning over-the-top film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually transpire for two more decades in the future, so even if we find a Martian gateway now, we might have a respite to avoid true disaster. If we did uncover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would remain extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the discovery wasn't something he personally paid for, allowing him to claim messianic ownership for humanity's journey to the cosmos. That's before we consider the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and resulting transformations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a good test case for why, exactly we allow Mars become a stretch-goal hope for mankind. Be it in John Carpenter's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to act as a beacon of optimism. Should someone wishes to close that questionable Martian real estate sale, maybe they should start with first making the fictional depiction look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the goofiest quirks of the present MCU is the way it handles the multiple world-threatening cataclysms, including a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are largely not shown in the films themselves; the movies have become like a clock radio perpetually running a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. So there's a large assortment of Marvel stuff 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 distant from Earth, and so seem quite unmoored from our sense of time. But the bad stuff is among the weakest the studio has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're facing a whole lot of frustrating stagnation in 2026, along with the related spin that in truth, this confusing mess unfolding before our eyes is crucial to future events. Even worse, in the real world that assertion will likely turn out to be correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the more distant future of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, initiating its chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and simultaneously boosted the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s only 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this virus propagates around the world and set in 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the wake of the actual pandemic that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re already half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously impacted by the ongoing virus, hasn't been wiped out, and our technology certainly hasn't been disabled. But this bleakest of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a significant bummer in store, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will unavoidably lead to violent conflict, no matter the work of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, even if those drives are not held by the most. Currently, it seems difficult to argue with that, even though we probably should.

Metropolis

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* takes place in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen lord over the skyscrapers as workers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that power the city. Rich city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean organizer who advocates for a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans creates a robot in her likeness, hoping to tear the entire Metropolis down in flames. Here, a machine created to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but someone who desires to see them destroyed; it's one element inverted by the modern world in a future that otherwise seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where advanced machinery depends on old-fashioned manual labor, which appears as a most logical fusion of rightwing disdain for “unskilled workers” and business zeal for an tech boom. It has not yet come to pass, but it's simple to picture a somewhat more utilitarian version of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a return to industrial production. The trickier, less plausible feat is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the poor is spanned with love; not so much with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the possibility