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The year 2025 might sound more futuristic. Maybe it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies one step beyond, and it's where we find ourselves, with each futuristic advancement – chiefly the broad integration of AI – seeming dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed anti-human technology would actually function more effectively?) Didn't anyone warn us about this?

The answer, at least concerning science fiction films made long ago (or occasionally recently) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of these prophecies are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) 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 valuable to explore where different film-makers, ranging from masters to journeymen, believed we'd be situated by this time in our planet's evolution. So let's take a look at some of the films that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they contain any lessons to teach us.

Doom

Well, this doesn't bode well. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Currently, the negative events – in terms of narrative and in terms of over-the-top film versions of a FPS video game – doesn't really transpire for another 20 years later, so should we do discover a portal to Mars now, we could gain some time to avoid catastrophe. If we did uncover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would remain super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the portal was not a thing he personally paid for, enabling him to assert savior-like credit for mankind's journey to the cosmos. That's before we even get to the collection of Martian chromosomes and resulting mutations into monstrous beings. (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 let Mars serve as a long-term hope for humanity. Whether in the director's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely act as a symbol of optimism. Should someone wishes to make that dubious Martian real estate sale, perhaps they ought to begin with first making the fantasy version appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the strangest features of the present MCU is how to account for the various world-threatening disasters, encompassing a half-decade leap whose events are mostly undepicted in the movies themselves; the films have become like a alarm clock perpetually running a few seconds fast – only instead of minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that fan sites clarify to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so seem pretty unmoored from our sense of time. But the bad stuff is among the weakest Marvel has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on this stuff, we're in for a whole lot of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the accompanying narrative that actually, this confusing mess happening in front of us is crucial to future events. More troublingly, in the actual world that claim will probably prove accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, initiating its chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of primates, it’s merely 2026, with additional human indignities (and victories for apes) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this virus spreads around the world and taking place in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the real-world pandemic that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; astonishingly, we’re now six years out from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously wounded by the still-spreading virus, was not annihilated, and our technology definitely has not been disabled. But this bleakest of the four modern *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a substantial downer in store, implying that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as either, will unavoidably result in warfare, no matter the work of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, even if those drives don't represent the majority. Right now, it feels hard to argue with that, even though we probably should.

The Silent Classic

By far the most prominent depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to marking its centennial. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists preside over the skyscrapers as laborers work tirelessly underground on the equipment that keep everything running. Affluent surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these enormous class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground activist who preaches a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with more radical plans builds a robot in her image, aiming to tear the whole of Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a machine created to mimic a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who wants to witness their downfall; it's a component inverted by reality in a future that otherwise appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery depends on traditional manual labor, which seems like a most logical fusion of rightwing disdain for “the working class” and business zeal for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's easy to imagine a somewhat less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a resurgence to industrial production. The more complex, less plausible accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the have-nots is bridged with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the chance