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signifies an altogether different‘revival project’in the face of global terrorism.This paper will explore the contradiction between these two imperatives, one
that pertains to the material city and the other to its cinematic counterpart. Drawing upon films such as Skyfall (2012), Spectre (2015) and Mission Impos‑
sible: Rogue Nation (2015), this paper will examine the most recent return of what John Orr has referred to as the ‘neo-Dickensian art’of the city (2002). As
Orr notes, this particular vision of the architectural underside of the city stakes its claim on the cinema beginning in the 1980s, complete with narrative arcs
featuring the homeless, migrants, and terrorists among a host of marginalized or threatening figures. The return of a specifically Victorian image of the city
constitutes a response to the gentrification of London in its transition to‘global city’, and one that visualizes the persistence of‘low London’despite the city’s
financial and architectural rise, This paper will address the cinematic return of this Victorian dichotomy of overworld/underworld in a heightened period
of London’s global status. London is no longer simply global but also, increasingly ‘smart’. The ‘smart city’ is a term applied to any city with aspirations to
extend the reach of ‘networked informatics’to its daily functioning; as stated by David Gann in Mayor Boris Johnson’s ‘Smart London Plan’,“data is the new
infrastructure”(2013). Perhaps London’s future skyline is the ideal consecration of another London renewal scheme dedicated to the smart phase of its glob‑
al identity.The films listed above put‘smartness’to the test, in a cycle of films that have traditionally displayed a preoccupation with technologically induced
forms of surveillance, corruption, and now, cyber terrorism. This chapter will examine the implications of their respective reconfigurations of the ‘neo-Dick‑
ensian art of the city’, where delving into the past forms the basis for a depiction of the city’s future.