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The date 2025 might sound more futuristic. Perhaps it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies one step beyond, a moment where we currently stand, with every futuristic advancement – chiefly the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – appearing dystopian, or perhaps more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology would actually operate more effectively?) Did no one warn us about this?

The answer, at least regarding our sci-fi movies made long ago (or occasionally recently) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of these prophecies are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but specifically far-fetched (when mankind is ultimately ravaged, we will almost certainly take the primate species alongside us). Others of them are visionary; others just look like bad green screen. But it's valuable to explore where various film-makers, from geniuses to journeymen, thought we'd be situated by this time in the world's development. So let's examine at some of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and determine if they contain any lessons to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth can set up a research facility. Currently, the bad stuff – regarding narrative and in terms of over-the-top cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really go down for two more decades later, so should we find a Martian gateway this year, we could gain a respite to avoid catastrophe. Were we to discover a portal to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would remain super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the discovery wasn't something he funded himself, allowing him to claim savior-like credit for humanity's expansion to the cosmos. That's before we consider the collection of Martian chromosomes and resulting transformations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for the reasons we let Mars serve as a long-term hope for mankind. Be it in the director's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet rarely act as a beacon of hope. If anyone wishes to close that dubious Martian property deal, perhaps they ought to begin with first making the fantasy version look good.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the strangest features of the current MCU is how to account for the multiple global disasters, encompassing a half-decade leap whose events are largely undepicted in the films themselves; the films have become like a alarm clock constantly set a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that various wikis clarify to be taking place in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated romp *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so seem pretty unmoored from any concrete sense of time. But the poorer material is among the weakest Marvel has created: 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 great deal of frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the accompanying narrative that actually, this nonsensical crap happening in front of us is crucial to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the real world that claim will likely turn out to be accurate.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series 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* begins nearer the present, initiating its timeline approximately 2016. So by the time a pathogen that knocks out the majority of Earth’s human population has done its damage, and simultaneously boosted the intelligence of apes, it’s only 2026, with additional human indignities (and simian triumphs) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this virus propagates globally and set in 2019, looks downright eerie in the wake of the real-world global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; astonishingly, we’re now half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and society, though obviously impacted by the ongoing virus, was not wiped out, and our technology certainly has not been disabled. But this bleakest of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a significant downer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines each, will unavoidably result in warfare, no matter the work of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, even if those drives don't represent the most. Right now, it feels hard to argue with that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

By far the most prominent depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to celebrating its 100th anniversary. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists lord over the towers as workers toil below the surface on the equipment that power the city. Rich city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean activist who preaches a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans creates a robot in her image, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a machine designed to mimic a human isn't a tool of the elite, but an entity who wants to see them destroyed; it's one element flipped by reality in a future that in other ways seems to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines 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 AI bubble. It has not yet materialized, but it's easy to imagine a slightly less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a return to industrial production. The trickier, less plausible feat is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is spanned with love; not so much with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the chance