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The date 2025 might sound increasingly advanced. Maybe it's the presence of the letter "f" in "five". But 2026 signifies one step beyond, and it's where we currently stand, with every science-fiction-style advancement – primarily the widespread adoption of AI – appearing dystopian, or perhaps more grim. (Doesn't it feel like in a proper dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-backed dehumanizing technology would actually function a bit better?) Didn't anyone sound the alarm about this?

The answer, at least regarding science fiction films made long ago (or occasionally months ago) positioned in 2026, is a mixed bag. Some of these prophecies are universally relevant (global catastrophe) but specifically far-fetched (when mankind is inevitably ravaged, we will most likely take the primate species alongside us). Some of them are prescient; the rest just look like bad visual effects. But it's worth examining where different film-makers, ranging from masters to journeymen, thought we'd be situated by this time in the world's evolution. Therefore, we shall take a look a selection of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 over the years and determine if they have anything to impart.

Doom

Well, this doesn't bode well. In the universe of the video game adaptation *Doom*, whose 20th anniversary was noted by virtually no one, 2026 is the year that mankind finds a gateway to an ancient city on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can establish a research facility. Currently, the negative events – regarding plot and concerning garish cinematic imitations of a FPS video game – doesn't really transpire for two more decades in the future, so even if we find a Martian gateway this year, we might have some time to avert true disaster. Were we to discover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether Elon Musk would remain extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the portal wasn't something he personally paid for, enabling him to assert savior-like ownership for humanity's journey to the cosmos. That's before we consider the harvesting of Martian chromosomes and resulting transformations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the acclaimed director's film.) Overall, *Doom* is (if nothing else) a useful example for why, exactly we allow Mars serve as a long-term aspiration for humanity. Be it in the director's chintzy space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the new-age mysticism of *Mission to Mars*, our distant neighbor planet doesn't tend to serve as a symbol of hope. If anyone wants to make that questionable red-planet real estate sale, perhaps they ought to begin with first making the fictional depiction appear appealing.

Marvel's Lesser Offerings

A of the strangest features of the present Marvel Cinematic Universe is how to account for the various global disasters, including a half-decade leap whose events are largely not shown in the movies themselves; the movies have become like a alarm clock perpetually running a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's annual increments. Consequently, there exists a large assortment of MCU content that various wikis helpfully explain to be taking place in 2026. The good ones, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underappreciated adventure *The Marvels*, take place far away from Earth, and so feel pretty unmoored from our sense of time. But the poorer material is some of the worst the studio has ever produced: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the Zoom-call debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Based on this stuff, we're in for a great deal of frustrating wheel-spinning in 2026, including the related spin that actually, this nonsensical crap happening before our eyes is essential to whatever happens next. More troublingly, in the real world that claim will probably turn out to be correct.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the original five-movie *Planet of the Apes* cycle is located in the further-flung tomorrow of Earth, but the new trilogy that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, starting its timeline approximately 2016. So by the time a pathogen that devastates most of Earth’s human population has run its course, and simultaneously boosted the intelligence of apes, it’s merely 2026, with additional human indignities (and simian triumphs) ahead. The post-credits scene of *Rise*, depicting how swiftly this virus propagates globally and taking place in 2019, looks profoundly unsettling in the aftermath of the real-world global health crisis that would begin in 2020. In contrast, the movie *Dawn* seems less literal; if you can believe it, we’re already half a decade from the spread of Covid-19, and humanity, though clearly wounded by the still-spreading virus, hasn't been annihilated, and our technology definitely hasn't been knocked out. Yet this most pessimistic of the quartet of contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) still has a substantial bummer to offer, implying that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as either, will unavoidably lead to warfare, regardless of the work of the most well-meaning among us. We’re subject to the whims of those who appeal to others’ baser impulses, although those drives are not held by the majority. Currently, it feels hard to argue with that, despite the fact that we ought to try.

Metropolis

By far the best-known depiction of 2026 in film is from a movie close to marking its centennial. Fritz Lang’s iconic silent film *Metropolis* takes place in a city of tomorrow where wealthy industrialists lord over the skyscrapers as laborers work tirelessly underground on the equipment that keep everything running. Rich surface resident Freder, son of the city’s ruler, has his perspective changed to these massive social gaps when he falls for Maria, an underground activist who advocates for a reconciliation of the two halves of Metropolis. A inventor with darker plans creates a robot in her likeness, aiming to tear the entire Metropolis down in flames. In this narrative, a robot created to imitate a human does not serve as an instrument of the elite, but an entity who wants to witness their downfall; it's a component flipped by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways appears to be well on its way. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where technology relies on old-fashioned human toil, which seems like a perfect union of conservative disdain for “unskilled workers” and business zeal for an AI bubble. It hasn't yet materialized, but it's simple to picture a slightly more utilitarian version of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a return to manufacturing. The more complex, harder-to-imagine accomplishment is the ending of the film, where the chasm between the wealthy and the have-nots is spanned 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