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The year 2025 could appear more futuristic. Perhaps it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies a leap forward, and it's where we find ourselves, with every science-fiction-style advancement – primarily the widespread adoption of AI – seeming bleak, or perhaps more grim. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the brain-numbing corporate-backed dehumanizing technology might function a bit better?) Didn't anyone warn us regarding this?

The response, particularly concerning science fiction films made long ago (or sometimes recently) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of these prophecies are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (if humanity is ultimately ravaged, we will almost certainly bring down the primate species with us). Others of them are visionary; the rest just resemble bad visual effects. But it's worth examining where various directors, ranging from masters to journeymen, thought we'd be situated by this time in our planet's evolution. Therefore, we shall examine at some of the films that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and see if they have anything to teach us.

Doom

Now, this doesn't bode well. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth can set up a research facility. Currently, the negative events – regarding narrative and in terms of over-the-top 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 this year, we could gain a respite to avert catastrophe. If we did discover a portal to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would remain super-psyched to send everyone to Mars or would immediately turn disheartened that the discovery was not a thing he personally paid for, allowing him to assert savior-like ownership for mankind's expansion into the stars. This precedes we even get to the collection of Martian chromosomes and resulting mutations into horrific creatures. (Once more, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for why, exactly we allow Mars serve as a long-term hope for humanity. Whether in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely serve as a symbol of optimism. Should someone wants to close that dubious Martian property deal, maybe they ought to begin with at least making the fictional depiction appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the strangest features of the current MCU is the way it handles the various world-threatening cataclysms, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose events are mostly undepicted in the films themselves; the movies have turned into a alarm clock perpetually set a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that fan sites helpfully explain to be taking place in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, take place distant from Earth, and so seem pretty detached from our sense of time. However the poorer material is some of the worst the studio has ever produced: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're in for a great deal of annoying stagnation in 2026, including the related narrative that in truth, this confusing mess unfolding before our eyes is crucial to whatever happens next. Even worse, in the actual world that claim will likely turn out to be accurate.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* series is set in the more distant future of Earth, but the new trilogy that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts nearer the present, starting its timeline approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out most of Earth’s human population has run its course, and also enhanced the intelligence of apes, it’s only 2026, with additional human indignities (and victories for apes) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this virus spreads globally and taking place around 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the wake of the actual 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 onset of Covid-19, and society, though obviously wounded by the ongoing virus, hasn't been wiped out, and our technology definitely hasn't been disabled. Yet this bleakest of the quartet of modern *Apes* movies (to date!) still has a substantial bummer in store, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will unavoidably result in violent conflict, no matter the efforts of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, although those instincts are not held by the most. Currently, it seems hard to argue with that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

Metropolis

Easily the best-known depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie nearing marking its 100th anniversary. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where rich businessmen preside over the skyscrapers as workers toil underground on the machines that power the city. Rich city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these massive class divisions when he falls for Maria, an subterranean activist who preaches a coming together of the separate strata of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans creates a automaton in her image, aiming to tear the whole of Metropolis to ruin. Here, a machine created to imitate a human isn't a tool of the elite, but someone who wants to see them destroyed; it's one element inverted by reality in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery depends on old-fashioned human toil, which appears as a perfect union of rightwing contempt for “unskilled workers” and business enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's simple to picture a somewhat more utilitarian iteration of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a resurgence to industrial production. The more complex, less plausible feat is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the have-nots is bridged with love; not so much with specific policies. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for coexistence; unlike *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the chance