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The date 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies a leap forward, a moment where we currently stand, with each science-fiction-style advancement – chiefly the broad integration of AI – seeming dystopian, or perhaps more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored anti-human technology might function more effectively?) Did no one sound the alarm about this?

The answer, at least regarding our sci-fi movies made long ago (or sometimes months ago) set in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but specifically implausible (if humanity is ultimately ravaged, we will almost certainly bring down the primate species with us). Some of them are visionary; others just look like bad green screen. Yet it remains valuable to explore where various film-makers, from geniuses to journeymen, believed we'd be situated by this time in our planet's development. Therefore, we shall take a look a selection of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and determine if they contain any lessons to impart.

The Game 'Doom'

Well, this isn't promising. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that humanity discovers a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to establish a research facility. Currently, the bad stuff – in terms of narrative and in terms of garish cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really go down for another 20 years in the future, so even if we find a Martian gateway this year, we could gain some time to avert true disaster. If we did discover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's truly hard to determine whether Elon Musk would still be extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become dejected that the portal was not a thing he funded himself, allowing him to assert messianic credit for humanity's journey into the stars. That's before we consider the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and resulting transformations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a good test case for why, exactly we let Mars serve as a stretch-goal hope for mankind. Be it in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to act as a symbol of optimism. If anyone wishes to close that questionable Martian property deal, perhaps they should start with first making the fantasy version appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the strangest features of the current Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the various world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing 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 large assortment of Marvel stuff that various wikis clarify to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so feel pretty unmoored from any concrete sense of time. But the poorer material is among the weakest Marvel has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're in for a great deal of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, including the related narrative 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 accurate.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle 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* starts closer to home, starting its chronology approximately 2016. So by the time a pathogen that devastates the majority of Earth’s people has done its damage, and also enhanced the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s only 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this virus spreads globally and set in 2019, looks downright eerie in the wake of the real-world global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re now half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though obviously impacted by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been wiped out, and technological infrastructure definitely hasn't been knocked out. But this bleakest of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a substantial downer to offer, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will inevitably lead to violent conflict, regardless of the work of the most well-meaning individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, although those instincts don't represent the most. Currently, it feels difficult to argue with that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

Metropolis

Easily the best-known portrayal of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing celebrating its 100th anniversary. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen lord over the towers as laborers work tirelessly below the surface on the equipment that power the city. Affluent surface resident Freder, son of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these massive social gaps when he falls for Maria, an underground activist who advocates for a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans creates a robot in her image, aiming to tear the entire Metropolis to ruin. Here, a robot designed to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but someone who wants 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 envisions a world where advanced machinery relies on traditional manual labor, which seems like a perfect union of conservative contempt for “the working class” and business enthusiasm for an tech boom. It hasn't yet come to pass, but it's easy to imagine a somewhat more utilitarian version of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a resurgence to industrial production. The trickier, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the poor is spanned with compassion; not so much with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the chance