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The date 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies a leap forward, a moment where we currently stand, with every futuristic advancement – primarily the broad integration of AI – appearing dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed dehumanizing technology might function a bit better?) Didn't anyone warn us about this?

The answer, at least regarding science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally recently) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of these prophecies are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but specifically implausible (if humanity is ultimately decimated, we will almost certainly bring down the primate species alongside us). Some of them are prescient; others just look like poor visual effects. But it's valuable to explore where various film-makers, ranging from masters to grunts, thought we'd be situated by now in the world's evolution. So let's take a look at some of the movies that have been set in 2026 over the years and determine if they contain any lessons to impart.

Doom

Well, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth can establish a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – regarding narrative and in terms of garish film versions of a FPS video game – does not actually transpire for another 20 years in the future, so should we do discover a portal to Mars now, we could gain some time to avoid true disaster. If we did uncover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would remain extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the portal was not a thing he personally paid for, allowing him to claim savior-like ownership for humanity's expansion into the stars. That's before we even get to the collection of Martian chromosomes and resulting mutations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, not to be confused with the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for why, exactly we let Mars become a stretch-goal hope for humanity. Whether in John Carpenter's chintzy genre hybrid *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to act as a beacon of optimism. Should someone wishes to close that questionable Martian property deal, perhaps they ought to begin with at least ensuring the fantasy version appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the strangest features of the current MCU is the way it handles the multiple world-threatening disasters, including a half-decade leap whose occurrences are mostly not shown in the films themselves; the films have turned into a alarm clock perpetually running a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's years. So there's a large assortment 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 underappreciated romp *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so feel pretty detached 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 remote-meeting debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're facing a great deal of frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the accompanying spin that in truth, this nonsensical crap happening before our eyes is essential to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the actual world that claim will likely prove correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the further-flung future of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* begins nearer the present, starting its chronology around 2016. Thus, when a pathogen that knocks out most of Earth’s people has run its course, and simultaneously enhanced the intelligence of primates, it’s merely 2026, with further human indignities (and victories for apes) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this virus spreads around the world and taking place in 2019, looks downright eerie in the wake of the real-world global health crisis that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; astonishingly, we’re now half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though obviously wounded by the still-spreading virus, was not annihilated, and technological infrastructure definitely hasn't been knocked out. Yet this bleakest of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a substantial bummer to offer, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines either, will unavoidably result in warfare, no matter the efforts of the most well-meaning among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who exploit others’ worst instincts, even if those drives don't represent the majority. Currently, it seems difficult to dispute that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

Easily the best-known depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to marking its centennial. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where wealthy industrialists lord over the skyscrapers as laborers 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 class divisions when he becomes obsessed with Maria, an subterranean activist who advocates for a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans creates a automaton in her likeness, aiming to bring the whole of Metropolis to ruin. Here, a robot created to mimic a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who desires to witness their downfall; it's a component inverted by reality in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology depends on old-fashioned human toil, which appears as a most logical fusion of conservative disdain for “unskilled workers” and business enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It has not yet come to pass, but it's simple to imagine a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the promise of a return to industrial production. The more complex, less plausible accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is spanned with compassion; rather than with concrete reforms. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the chance