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The year 2025 might sound more futuristic. Perhaps it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with each futuristic advancement – chiefly the widespread adoption of AI – appearing bleak, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology would actually operate a bit better?) Did no one warn us about this?

The answer, at least concerning science fiction films made long ago (or sometimes recently) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of these prophecies are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is ultimately decimated, we will almost certainly take the ape population alongside us). Some of them are prescient; others just resemble bad visual effects. But it's worth examining where different directors, from geniuses to journeymen, thought we'd be positioned by this time in our planet's development. So let's examine at some of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they have anything to impart.

Doom

Now, this isn't promising. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to set up a scientific outpost. Currently, the negative events – in terms of narrative and concerning over-the-top cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really go down for another 20 years later, so even if we do discover a portal to Mars this year, we could gain some time to avert true disaster. Were we to uncover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would still be super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the portal wasn't something he personally paid for, enabling him to assert savior-like ownership for humanity's journey to the cosmos. That's before we consider the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent mutations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a good test case 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 realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to act as a symbol of optimism. If anyone wants to close that questionable Martian property deal, maybe they should start with at least ensuring the fantasy version appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the strangest features of the current MCU is how to account for the various global cataclysms, encompassing a half-decade leap whose events are largely not shown in the films themselves; the films have turned into a clock radio constantly set a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a whole bunch of MCU content that various wikis clarify 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 feel pretty unmoored from our sense of time. But the poorer material is among the weakest Marvel has created: 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 in for a great deal of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, including the accompanying spin that in truth, this nonsensical crap unfolding in front of us is crucial to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will probably prove correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the further-flung future of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, initiating its timeline around 2016. Thus, when a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s human population has run its course, and also boosted the intelligence of primates, it’s only 2026, with further human indignities (and victories for apes) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this virus spreads globally and taking place around 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the wake of the real-world pandemic that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; if you can believe it, we’re already half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly wounded by the ongoing virus, hasn't been annihilated, and technological infrastructure certainly has not been knocked out. Yet this most pessimistic of the four modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a significant downer in store, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines either, will inevitably result in warfare, no matter the work of the best-intentioned among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, even if those instincts don't represent the most. Right now, it seems difficult to argue with that, even though we probably should.

Metropolis

Easily the most prominent depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists preside over the skyscrapers as laborers toil below the surface on the equipment that power the city. Rich city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these enormous social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean activist who advocates for a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans creates a robot in her image, aiming to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a machine created to mimic a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who desires to see them destroyed; it's one element inverted by reality in a future that in other ways appears to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery relies on old-fashioned human toil, which seems like a most logical union of conservative contempt for “the working class” and business zeal for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's easy to picture a somewhat more utilitarian version of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a resurgence to industrial production. The more complex, less plausible feat is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is bridged with love; 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 appears hopeful about the possibility