Metacinematic moments in screen narrative regularly turn attention back toward film’s point of material origination—from story to the conditions of its technical mediation—without turning their back either on the plot or its cultural surround. This double slant of the screen story, both back toward medial operations and outward toward some thematic interface with its social setting, is what this chapter sets out to discriminate in its “technique\text/context” articulation. Revisiting moments of medial self-acknowledgment in films from Citizen Kane through Apocalypse Now to Blade Runner 2049 prepares terms for assessing a late installment in one of Hollywood’s ongoing CGI franchise blockbusters, Marvel’s Spiderman: Far from Home (2040). In that sci-fi plot both digital technique and context implode upon the developing narrative text in the irony of an international political deception perpetrated by Hollywood-schooled VFX (visual special effects) when deployed, not on some inset screen, but in real metropolitan space.
