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The year 2025 could appear more futuristic. Perhaps it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies one step beyond, a moment where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style development – chiefly the broad integration of AI – appearing dystopian, or possibly more grim. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed anti-human technology would actually function a bit better?) Did no one sound the alarm regarding this?

The response, at least concerning science fiction films made long ago (or sometimes recently) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of those warnings are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but in detail implausible (if humanity is ultimately ravaged, we will almost certainly bring down the primate species alongside us). Others of them are visionary; others just resemble poor green screen. But it's valuable to explore where different directors, from geniuses to grunts, believed we'd be positioned by now in our planet's evolution. So let's take a look a selection of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and see if they contain any lessons to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, 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 finds a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – in terms of narrative and in terms of garish cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really transpire for two more decades later, so even if we do discover a portal to Mars now, we might have a respite to avert true disaster. If we did discover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would still be super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the discovery wasn't something he personally paid for, allowing him to assert messianic credit for mankind's journey into the stars. This precedes we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent transformations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for the reasons we allow Mars serve as a long-term hope for humanity. Be it in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely serve as a symbol of optimism. Should someone wishes to make that dubious red-planet property deal, maybe they ought to begin with first making the fictional depiction appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the goofiest quirks of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way it handles the multiple world-threatening disasters, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are largely undepicted in the films themselves; the films have become like a clock radio constantly set a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a large assortment 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 romp *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so seem pretty unmoored from our sense of time. But the poorer material is among the weakest Marvel has ever produced: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on this stuff, we're facing a great deal of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the accompanying narrative that in truth, this nonsensical crap unfolding before our eyes is essential to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the actual world that claim will probably turn out to be accurate.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is located in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, initiating its timeline around 2016. So by the time a pathogen that knocks out the majority of Earth’s human population has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of primates, it’s merely 2026, with additional human indignities (and simian triumphs) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how rapidly this virus spreads around the world and set in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the real-world pandemic that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* seems 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 still-spreading virus, hasn't been wiped out, and our technology certainly hasn't been disabled. Yet this most pessimistic of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a significant downer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably lead to warfare, regardless of the efforts of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, even if those drives are not held by the majority. Currently, it seems hard to argue with that, even though we probably should.

Metropolis

By far the most prominent depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to celebrating its centennial. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists lord over the towers as workers toil underground on the equipment that power the city. Rich city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these massive social gaps when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an underground activist who preaches a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans builds a automaton in her likeness, hoping to bring the whole of Metropolis down in flames. Here, a robot designed to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who wants to see them destroyed; it's a component inverted by the modern world in a future that in other ways appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology relies on traditional human toil, which appears as a most logical fusion of conservative disdain for “unskilled workers” and corporate enthusiasm for an tech boom. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's simple to picture a slightly more utilitarian version of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a return to manufacturing. The more complex, harder-to-imagine feat is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the poor is bridged with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the possibility