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The date 2025 could appear increasingly advanced. Perhaps it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". However 2026 signifies one step beyond, and it's where we find ourselves, with each science-fiction-style development – primarily the broad integration of artificial intelligence – seeming bleak, or possibly even worse. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology might function more effectively?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm regarding this?

The response, at least concerning our sci-fi movies made long ago (or sometimes recently) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of these prophecies are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but specifically far-fetched (when mankind is ultimately ravaged, we will most likely take the primate species alongside us). Some of them are prescient; others just resemble poor green screen. But it's valuable to explore where various directors, from geniuses to grunts, thought we'd be positioned by this time in the world's development. Therefore, we shall examine at some of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and see if they have anything to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this doesn't bode well. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a portal to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can establish a scientific outpost. Currently, the negative events – regarding plot and in terms of over-the-top cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – does not actually transpire for another 20 years in the future, so even if we find a portal to Mars this year, we might have some time to avoid true disaster. Were we to discover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether Elon Musk would still be super-psyched to dispatch people to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the discovery wasn't something he funded himself, allowing him to claim messianic credit for mankind's expansion to the cosmos. This precedes we even get to the harvesting of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent transformations into horrific creatures. (Again, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the acclaimed director's film.) In general, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for the reasons we allow Mars become a stretch-goal hope for humanity. Whether in John Carpenter's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the more grounded science fiction of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely act as a symbol of hope. Should someone wants to make that dubious Martian property deal, maybe they should start with first making the fantasy version appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

A of the strangest features of the present MCU is the way it handles the various world-threatening disasters, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose occurrences are mostly undepicted in the movies themselves; the movies have turned into a alarm clock perpetually running a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's years. Consequently, there exists a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that various wikis helpfully explain to be set in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated romp *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so seem pretty detached from our sense of time. But the bad stuff is among the weakest Marvel has ever produced: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on these examples, we're in for a whole lot of frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the related narrative that in truth, this nonsensical crap happening in front of us is crucial to future events. Even worse, in the real world that assertion will likely prove correct.

The Apes Saga Continues

Most of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is set in the further-flung future of Earth, but the modern series that started with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, initiating its chronology approximately 2016. Thus, when a virus that devastates the majority of Earth’s people has done its damage, and simultaneously boosted the intelligence of primates, it’s only 2026, with further setbacks for mankind (and simian triumphs) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this virus spreads globally and taking place around 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems more abstract; if you can believe it, we’re now half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though clearly wounded by the still-spreading virus, was not annihilated, and technological infrastructure definitely has not been disabled. Yet this most pessimistic of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a substantial downer to offer, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, however one defines each, will inevitably lead to violent conflict, no matter the efforts of the best-intentioned among us. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, although those drives don't represent the most. Currently, it seems hard to argue with that, even though we ought to try.

Metropolis

By far the best-known portrayal of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing celebrating its 100th anniversary. Fritz Lang’s silent classic *Metropolis* takes place in a futuristic city where wealthy industrialists preside over the skyscrapers as laborers work tirelessly underground on the equipment that power the city. Rich surface resident Freder, son of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these enormous class divisions when he falls for Maria, an subterranean activist who preaches a coming together of the two halves of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans builds a robot in her image, aiming to tear the entire Metropolis down in flames. Here, a robot created to mimic a human isn't a tool of the elite, but someone who wants to witness their downfall; it's a component flipped by the modern world in a future that otherwise seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology depends on old-fashioned manual labor, which appears as a perfect fusion of conservative contempt for “the working class” and business zeal for an AI bubble. It has not yet materialized, but it's easy to picture a slightly more utilitarian version of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a resurgence to industrial production. The more complex, harder-to-imagine feat is the ending of the film, where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is bridged with compassion; not so much with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; unlike *Dawn*, it seems hopeful about the chance