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The date 2025 might sound more futuristic. Maybe it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies a leap forward, and it's where we find ourselves, with each science-fiction-style development – primarily the broad integration of artificial intelligence – appearing dystopian, or possibly even worse. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology would actually function more effectively?) Didn't anyone warn us about this?

The response, at least regarding our sci-fi movies made long ago (or occasionally recently) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of these prophecies are broadly applicable (global catastrophe) but specifically far-fetched (when mankind is ultimately ravaged, we will almost certainly take the ape population alongside us). Others of them are visionary; the rest just resemble poor visual effects. Yet it remains valuable to explore where various film-makers, ranging from masters to journeymen, thought we'd be situated by this time in the world's evolution. Therefore, we shall examine at some of the films that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they have anything to impart.

Doom

Well, this doesn't bode well. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth can set up a research facility. Currently, the negative events – in terms of plot and in terms of over-the-top film versions of a FPS video game – doesn't really transpire for two more decades later, so should we find a Martian gateway this year, we could gain a respite to avoid true disaster. If we did uncover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether Elon Musk would remain extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the portal wasn't something he funded himself, allowing him to assert savior-like ownership for mankind's expansion to the cosmos. That's before we even get to the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and subsequent transformations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a good test case for why, exactly we let Mars serve as a stretch-goal hope for mankind. Whether in the director's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely serve as a symbol of hope. Should someone wants to close that dubious Martian property deal, perhaps they ought to begin with first ensuring the fantasy version appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the strangest features of the current MCU is the way it handles the various global disasters, including a half-decade leap whose events are mostly undepicted in the films themselves; the films have turned into a clock radio constantly running a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of MCU content that various wikis clarify to be taking place 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 pretty detached from our sense of time. But the poorer material is among the weakest Marvel 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 this stuff, we're in for a whole lot of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the accompanying narrative that in truth, this confusing mess happening in front of us is essential to future events. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will likely prove correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the classic five-film *Planet of the Apes* series 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* begins closer to home, initiating its chronology around 2016. So by the time a virus that devastates the majority of Earth’s human population has run its course, and simultaneously boosted the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s merely 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this virus propagates around the world and set in 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the real-world global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; astonishingly, we’re already half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though clearly impacted by the still-spreading virus, was not annihilated, and our technology certainly hasn't been knocked out. Yet this bleakest of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a significant downer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will unavoidably result in warfare, no matter the work of the best-intentioned among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, although those instincts are not held by the most. Right now, it feels hard to dispute that, even though we ought to try.

Metropolis

Easily the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing marking its 100th anniversary. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where wealthy industrialists preside over the towers as laborers toil underground on the equipment that keep everything running. Affluent surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean organizer who advocates for a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans builds a automaton in her image, aiming to bring the whole of Metropolis down in flames. Here, a robot 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 flipped by reality in a future that in other ways appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery depends on traditional human toil, which appears as a perfect fusion of rightwing contempt for “the working class” and corporate zeal for an tech boom. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's simple to imagine a somewhat less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a return to manufacturing. The trickier, less plausible accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the gap 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 advocates peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the possibility