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The year 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies a leap forward, and it's where we find ourselves, with every science-fiction-style advancement – chiefly the broad integration of AI – appearing dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed anti-human technology would actually function a bit better?) Did no one sound the alarm regarding this?

The answer, at least concerning our sci-fi movies made long ago (or occasionally months ago) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. A number of these prophecies are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but in detail implausible (if humanity is ultimately decimated, we will most likely take the ape population alongside us). Others of them are visionary; the rest just resemble poor green screen. Yet it remains valuable to explore where different directors, from geniuses to grunts, thought we'd be situated by now in our planet's evolution. So let's examine at some of the films that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and see if they contain any lessons to teach us.

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 gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to set up a research facility. Now, the bad stuff – in terms of narrative and in terms of over-the-top film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually transpire for two more decades in the future, so even if we do discover a Martian gateway now, we might have some time to avoid catastrophe. If we did uncover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would still be super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the portal was not a thing he funded himself, enabling him to claim messianic ownership for mankind's journey into the stars. That's before we consider the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and resulting transformations into horrific creatures. (Again, 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 allow Mars become a stretch-goal aspiration for humanity. Whether in the director's cheap-looking genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely act as a symbol of hope. If anyone wishes to close that dubious Martian property deal, maybe they ought to begin with at least ensuring the fictional depiction look good.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the strangest features of the current MCU is how to account for the various global cataclysms, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose events are mostly undepicted in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a clock radio perpetually running a few seconds 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 good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so feel quite detached from our sense of time. However the bad stuff is among the weakest Marvel has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by this stuff, we're in for a great deal of annoying stagnation in 2026, including the related spin that actually, this confusing mess unfolding in front of us is essential to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the real world that assertion will likely turn out to be correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the further-flung future of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins closer to home, starting its timeline approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that devastates the majority of Earth’s human population has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s only 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) ahead. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this virus propagates globally and set in 2019, looks downright eerie in the aftermath of the real-world global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; astonishingly, we’re already half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though clearly wounded by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been annihilated, and our technology certainly has not been knocked out. But this bleakest of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a significant bummer to offer, suggesting that human and/or ape nature, however one defines either, will inevitably result in violent conflict, regardless of the efforts of the most well-meaning among us. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, although those instincts don't represent the most. Currently, it seems hard to argue with that, even though we probably should.

The Silent Classic

By far the most prominent portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to celebrating its 100th anniversary. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where wealthy industrialists preside over the skyscrapers as workers work tirelessly underground 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 two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans builds a robot in her likeness, hoping to tear the entire Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a machine designed to imitate a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but an entity who desires to witness their downfall; it's a component inverted by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also envisions a world where technology relies on traditional manual labor, which seems like a most logical union of conservative contempt for “unskilled workers” and business enthusiasm for an tech boom. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's simple to picture a slightly more utilitarian version of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a resurgence to manufacturing. The more complex, less plausible feat is the ending of the film, where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is spanned with compassion; not so much with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the possibility