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The date 2025 could appear more futuristic. Maybe it's the sound of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies a leap forward, and it's where we find ourselves, with every futuristic development – chiefly the widespread adoption of AI – seeming dystopian, or possibly more grim. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored anti-human technology might function a bit better?) Didn't anyone warn us about this?

The response, at least regarding science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally months ago) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. A number of those warnings are broadly applicable (worldwide disaster) but in detail far-fetched (when mankind is ultimately decimated, we will almost certainly take the ape population alongside us). Some of them are prescient; others just look like bad green screen. But it's worth examining where different directors, from geniuses to grunts, thought we'd be situated by now in the world's development. So let's take a look at some of the films that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they have anything to impart.

Doom

Well, this isn't promising. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that humanity finds a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the people of Earth are able to establish a scientific outpost. Now, the negative events – in terms of plot and in terms of garish film versions of a first-person-shooter video game – doesn't really go down for another 20 years later, so even if we find a portal to Mars now, we could gain some time to avert catastrophe. Were we to uncover a portal to an ancient Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to determine whether a certain tech billionaire would still be extremely excited to dispatch people to Mars or would immediately turn dejected that the portal was not a thing he funded himself, enabling him to claim savior-like credit for mankind's expansion to the cosmos. That's before we consider the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent transformations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is closer to 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for why, exactly we let Mars serve as a stretch-goal aspiration for humanity. Be it in the director's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet doesn't tend to act as a symbol of hope. If anyone wishes to make that dubious Martian real estate sale, perhaps they ought to begin with first making the fictional depiction look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the strangest features of the current MCU is the way it handles the various global disasters, including a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are mostly not shown in the films themselves; the films have become like a clock radio constantly running a few minutes fast – only instead of minutes, it's years. So there's a large assortment of MCU content that fan sites clarify to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated romp *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so seem pretty unmoored from our sense of time. But the bad stuff is some of the worst the studio has created: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by this stuff, we're in for a great deal of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the accompanying spin that in truth, this nonsensical crap unfolding in front of us is crucial to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the actual world that claim will probably prove correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the original five-film *Planet of the Apes* series 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, initiating its timeline approximately 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out the majority of Earth’s people has done its damage, and simultaneously enhanced the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s only 2026, with further human indignities (and simian triumphs) to come. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this virus propagates globally and taking place in 2019, looks downright eerie in the aftermath of the real-world pandemic that would begin in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; astonishingly, we’re now half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though obviously impacted by the ongoing virus, hasn't been annihilated, and technological infrastructure definitely hasn't been disabled. But this most pessimistic of the four modern *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a significant downer to offer, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will inevitably result in warfare, regardless of the work of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, even if those instincts don't represent the majority. Currently, it seems hard to argue with that, even though we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

By far the best-known depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie close to celebrating its 100th anniversary. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a futuristic city where wealthy industrialists preside over the towers as workers toil below the surface on the equipment that power the city. Rich surface resident Freder, scion of the city’s ruler, has his eyes opened to these massive social gaps when he falls for Maria, an subterranean organizer who advocates for a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans creates a automaton in her image, aiming to tear the entire Metropolis to ruin. In this narrative, a machine created to mimic a human isn't a tool of the ruling corporate class, but someone who wants to witness their downfall; it's a component inverted by reality in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery relies on old-fashioned human toil, which seems like a perfect fusion of conservative disdain for “unskilled workers” and corporate zeal for an tech boom. It has not yet come to pass, but it's easy to imagine a somewhat more utilitarian version of Lang’s city growing with the promise of a return to industrial production. The more complex, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the poor is spanned with compassion; not so much with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it seems optimistic about the chance