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The date 2025 could appear more futuristic. Perhaps it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies one step beyond, a moment where we find ourselves, with each science-fiction-style advancement – chiefly the broad integration of AI – seeming dystopian, or possibly more grim. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored anti-human technology might function more effectively?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm regarding this?

The answer, particularly regarding our sci-fi movies from years ago (or sometimes recently) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail implausible (if humanity is ultimately decimated, we will most likely bring down the ape population with us). Others of them are prescient; others just resemble poor visual effects. But it's worth examining where various directors, ranging from masters to grunts, thought we'd be situated by now in the world's development. Therefore, we shall take a look at some of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they contain any lessons to impart.

Doom

Now, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can establish a scientific outpost. Now, the bad stuff – regarding plot and concerning garish cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – doesn't really transpire for another 20 years in the future, so should we do discover a portal to Mars now, we could gain some time to avert catastrophe. If we did discover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether Elon Musk would still be extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the discovery was not a thing he personally paid for, enabling him to assert savior-like ownership for humanity's journey into the stars. That's before we even get to the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent mutations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for why, exactly we allow Mars serve as a long-term hope for mankind. Whether in the director's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely act as a symbol of hope. If anyone wants to close that questionable red-planet property deal, maybe they should start with first ensuring the fantasy version look good.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the strangest features of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the multiple global disasters, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are mostly undepicted in the films themselves; the movies have turned into a alarm clock perpetually set a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a large assortment 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 underappreciated romp *The Marvels*, take place distant from Earth, and so seem quite unmoored from any concrete sense of time. But the poorer material is some of the worst Marvel has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're in for a whole lot of frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the related narrative that in truth, this nonsensical crap unfolding in front of us is crucial to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will likely turn out to be correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the more distant future of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, starting its timeline around 2016. So by the time a virus that devastates most of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and also enhanced the cognitive abilities of apes, it’s only 2026, with further human indignities (and simian triumphs) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this contagion propagates globally and taking place around 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual global health crisis that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; if you can believe it, we’re now half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously wounded by the ongoing virus, was not wiped out, and technological infrastructure definitely hasn't been disabled. But this bleakest of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a substantial bummer in store, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will inevitably result in violent conflict, no matter the work of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, even if those drives are not held by the majority. Right now, it seems hard to dispute that, even though we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

Easily the most prominent depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to marking its centennial. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen lord over the towers as workers work tirelessly below the surface on the equipment that keep everything running. Affluent surface resident Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these enormous social gaps when he falls for Maria, an subterranean organizer who preaches a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans creates a automaton in her likeness, aiming to bring the entire Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a robot designed to imitate a human isn't a tool of the elite, but someone who wants to see them destroyed; it's one element flipped by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery depends on traditional manual labor, which appears as a perfect union of conservative contempt for “the working class” and corporate enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It has not yet come to pass, but it's easy to imagine a slightly more utilitarian version 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 gap between the wealthy and the have-nots is spanned with love; rather than with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the chance