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The date 2025 could appear more futuristic. Maybe it's the presence of the consonant "f" in "five". But 2026 represents a leap forward, a moment where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style advancement – chiefly the widespread adoption of AI – appearing bleak, or possibly more grim. (It often seems like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed anti-human technology might function more effectively?) Did no one sound the alarm regarding this?

The answer, particularly concerning science fiction films made long ago (or sometimes months ago) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of those warnings are universally relevant (worldwide disaster) but specifically implausible (if humanity is ultimately ravaged, we will almost certainly bring down the ape population with us). Some of them are prescient; others just look like poor green screen. But it's valuable to explore where various film-makers, from geniuses to grunts, believed we'd be positioned by now in the world's development. So let's take a look a selection of the films that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they have anything to teach us.

Doom

Now, this doesn't bode well. According to the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a gateway to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the people of Earth can set up a scientific outpost. Currently, the bad stuff – regarding plot and concerning garish cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – doesn't really go down for another 20 years in the future, so even if we do discover a portal to Mars now, we might have a respite to avert true disaster. Were we to discover a passageway to an old Martian city, it's genuinely difficult to tell whether a certain tech billionaire 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 assert messianic credit for humanity's journey into the stars. This precedes we consider the collection of Martian chromosomes and subsequent transformations into monstrous beings. (Again, this is nearer 2046, not to be confused with the Wong Kar-wai film.) In general, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for why, exactly we let Mars serve as a long-term aspiration for mankind. Be it in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely act as a symbol of optimism. Should someone wishes to make that dubious Martian property deal, maybe they ought to begin with at least ensuring the fictional depiction look good.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

One of the goofiest quirks of the present MCU is the way it handles the various global cataclysms, encompassing a five-year time-jump whose events are largely undepicted in the movies themselves; the films have turned into a clock radio perpetually running a few seconds fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. So there's a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that fan sites helpfully explain to be taking place in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated adventure *The Marvels*, occur distant from Earth, and so seem pretty unmoored from our sense of time. But the bad stuff is among the weakest the studio has ever produced: the nonsensically meandering TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call farce of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're in for a great deal of annoying wheel-spinning in 2026, along with the related spin that in truth, this confusing mess happening in front of us is essential to future events. More troublingly, in the actual world that claim will likely prove correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy 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 knocks out most of Earth’s people has done its damage, and also boosted the intelligence of apes, it’s only 2026, with further human indignities (and victories for apes) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, illustrating how swiftly this contagion propagates around the world and set in 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the actual pandemic that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; astonishingly, we’re already half a decade from the onset of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly wounded by the still-spreading virus, was not wiped out, and our technology definitely hasn't been knocked out. Yet this most pessimistic of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (to date!) nonetheless contains a significant bummer in store, implying that human and/or ape nature, whatever qualifies as either, will unavoidably lead to warfare, regardless of the work of the best-intentioned among us. We’re at the mercy of those who appeal to others’ worst instincts, even if those instincts are not held by the most. Currently, it seems difficult to argue with that, despite the fact that we probably should.

Metropolis

By far the most prominent depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing celebrating its centennial. The director's iconic silent film *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists lord over the towers as workers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that keep everything running. Rich city-dweller Freder, scion of the city’s master, has his eyes opened to these enormous class divisions when he falls for Maria, an subterranean organizer who preaches a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with more radical plans builds a automaton in her image, hoping to tear the whole of Metropolis down in flames. Here, a machine designed to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but someone who desires to witness their downfall; it's a component flipped by reality in a vision of tomorrow that otherwise appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology depends on old-fashioned human toil, which seems like a most logical union of rightwing disdain for “unskilled workers” and corporate zeal for an AI bubble. It has not yet materialized, but it's easy to imagine a slightly less stylish-looking iteration of Lang’s city growing with the prospect of a return to industrial production. The trickier, less plausible accomplishment is the conclusion of the film, where the chasm between the haves and the poor is bridged with compassion; rather than with specific policies. Similar to *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie advocates peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears optimistic about the chance