SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME

SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME. Jon Watts, dir. Chris McKenna, story. Erik Sommers, script. Based on the Marvel comic book by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Claude Paré, production design. USA: Columbia Pictures (presents), Marvel Studios (in association with) Pascal Pictures, Stereo D (production) / Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Releasing (US, Canada, UK theatrical distribution), 2019. See IMDb for details of distribution.[1]

The Mise-en-scène includes a satisfying number of interesting gadgets, but see for moderate-size drones capable of holographic projection that can put people unknowingly into a kind of virtual reality (VR) and can attack in swarms, for which on the latter cf. and contrast Bruce Sterling's story "Swarm," Stanislaw Lem's The Invincible and "The Upside-Down Evolution"; and the films BIG HERO 6 (2014), and THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS.

Also:

• AR (augmented reality) through Tony Stark's glasses putting users in contact with E.D.I.T.H., an AI computer commanding tark Industries'[2] impressive defense (and offense) system, itself capable of launching numerous drones.[3]
• SPOILER potential (in a couple senses): the near-hallucinogenic projections are diegetically — in the world of the film — holograms and other projections ("holographic illusions"); what audiences see on the screen is projection by a movie projector of CGI effects, for a potential metacinematic point if viewers choose to accept it (which we think will be uncommon). 
• Especially for those who studied SF film with Vivian Sobchack's Limits of Infinity/Screening Space, we note the vivid shot of the Stark corporation's hover-jet hovering low over neat rows of tulips on a commercial Dutch tulip farm. It's an image of the high-tech aircraft superimposed on the organic of tulips, which have themselves been incorporated by human effort (and technology) into commerce, and into neat, geometrical arrays. 
• The superhero costume of Mysterio is both, in the illusions in the film and the film's diegetic reality, a very high-tech set of devices and the tightly-fitted immediate environment of the character Quentin Beck/Mysterio, the wearer. 

RDE, Initial Compiler, 9Jul19; 6Aug23