Created by Oren Uziel and Steve Lightfoot, Spider-Noir follows Ben Reilly (Nicolas “Fucking” Cage), an aging, down-on-his-luck private investigator, who grapples with his past life as the only superhero in 1930s New York City, the Spider. When an exceptional case comes his way, Ben must become the Spider once more.
Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse and its sequel, Across the Spider-Verse, introduced audiences to the endless variants of Spider-Man from across the multiverse that were adapted from numerous comics. From Miles Morales to a cartoon pig, these alternate universe versions of Marvel’s most iconic character have stood out hugely in many ways, and one of the most notable among them is Spider-Noir, a unique reinterpretation of the character inspired by film noir that emerges in New York during the Great Depression and was introduced on the big screen in Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse, voiced by national treasure Nicolas Cage. With the character gaining a sudden burst of popularity due to his role in the film, a spin-off series focused on Spider-Noir was announced not long after. The series has Cage reprising the role but follows a different version of the character that is from a similar but alternate universe than the one seen in the Spider-Verse animated films.
After almost seven years of production, the series has finally arrived on Prime with its first season available to watch in both authentic black and white and true-hue full color. Did this long-awaited series end up being worth the long wait? It absolutely did! Spider-Noir is a wonderfully executed adaptation of Spider-Man that leans into classic detective noir storytelling mixed with core elements of the character, as well as the dark and violent roots of the source material. It’s fun, gritty, smart, sleek, stylish and not afraid to go Cage Crazy in a self-contained universe. After enduring years of horrific Spider-Man villain solo projects, Sony finally lets passionate creatives take charge to create a magnificently crafted and artistically refreshing installment of the Spider-Man multiverse mythos that welcomes everyone to a truly topsy-turvy world.
In a 1930s setting with all the elements of Film Noir infused in it, you need a truly committed cast to bring this wild universe to life and we ended up getting an insanely great cast that delivers extremely dedicated performances for their respective characters. Anchoring the cast is an all-time bizarre yet amazing performance by Nicolas Cage as Ben Reilly. This is Cage’s first time doing a series in his long career as an actor but, as always, he fully commits to the role and has fun when playing this smooth-talking yet deeply troubled version of Spider-Man. Cage goes full on 1930s noir detective with a sharp wit, a cynical worldview and cheesy lingo that only Cage could make work, while simultaneously portraying a deeply flawed and morally complex hero that has many compelling layers to him that ends up being just as emotionally compelling as all the film versions of the character we have seen so far over the years.
He has all the heart and tragic narrative qualities of all the other Spider-People that is tainted by the bleak world he inhabits, making him a reluctant hero needing to get back in action. People mostly know Cage for his over-the-top roles that they forget he can provide incredible drama performances so seeing this series utilize both sides of his talent in an extremely fitting setting was truly awesome to experience both in an entertaining and investing way.
While Cage will certainly steal the show with his performance, the rest of the cast also delivers performances just as fantastic as his for both main and supporting characters making them all investing in unique ways.
First there is Lamorne Morris as Joe “Robbie” Robertson, Ben’s friend and a hard-working freelance journalist who pursues riskier stories to garner attention and progress his career. Much like Ned in the MCU, Robbie is a truly dedicated friend and ally to Spider-Man that goes out of his way to not only help with his PI cases and superhero antics but also be there as his personal moral support. He is trying to get Ben out of the hole he dug himself into, all while enduring his struggles as both a reporter and a black man in the 1930s era, where racial minorities faced disproportionate hardship, state-sanctioned discrimination, and escalating racial terror, mostly by law enforcement. He is a truly investing character that is given a great performance by Lamorne Morris, who I haven’t seen much of since his amazing Emmy award-winning performance in Fargo as Trooper Witt Farr. He deserves many more roles, especially after his work in this series.
Also supporting Ben is Janet Ruiz, played by Karen Rodriguez, Ben’s secretary and fellow investigator. Like Robbie, Janet Ruiz is an extremely helpful and supportive friend to Ben who is absolutely lovable from the very moment she steps on screen. She can be rightfully hard on Ben, but it’s clear that she does love him and is willing to do anything for him despite his faults. She’s given a truly heartfelt and charming performance by Karen Rodriguez, who I have never seen in anything before this series but now I’m hoping to see more of due to her great work here.
Serving as Ben’s love interest in this series is the sly and enigmatic Felicia “Cat” Hardy, played beautifully by Li Jun Li, a femme fatale nightclub singer who is an alternate version of the popular anti-hero, a skilled cat burglar Black Cat from Spider-Man comics. She may not be stealing jewels in this universe but she definitely steals hearts, including that of our main hero, as she brings such a magnetic presence every time she is on screen. She is a truly compelling character on her own that is trying to achieve her own goals within the dangerous 1930s criminal underworld that she’s gotten herself pulled into and feels herself being controlled by it every day she’s in it.
The relationship between her and Ben is a complicated one that involves fiery chemistry between them yet a clear opposition in morals that begins to spiral as the story progresses. Li Jun Li masterfully delivers a range of emotions and cements herself as one of the best portrayals of the character ever to be done in media, even as an alternate universe counterpart.
Playing the role of the main villain of this series is Silvermane, played by Brendan Gleeson, an Irish mob boss with connections to Ben’s past as the Spider who is an alternate version of the lesser-known Spider-Man villain of the same name but completely different origins. Silvermane has made numerous appearances in multiple animated Spider-Man shows but has never received a live-action adaptation until now. In this series, he is a Kingpin-like mob boss who has firm influence in this 1930s New York City but seeks to have even greater influence by recruiting superpowered criminals to take control of the city, disrupt the election of a political rival, and even hire Ben Reilly on occasion to help uncover conspiracies in his organization.
He may appear as your typical mob boss villain at first, but he ends up being a truly terrifying figure who wouldn’t hesitate to kill anyone who dares cross him. He is not afraid of anything or anyone, including the Spider, and he is also not afraid to do the dirty work in person rather than having his lackeys finish the job for him. Cementing him further as a terrifying yet awesome villain is an equally awesome performance by Brendan Gleeson who really gives off Vincent D’Onofrio levels of menace through physical and manipulative means.
We do end up getting three notable villains from Spider-Man’s rogues’ gallery that all play great supporting roles in the season in their own ways, and they are Flint Marko, aka Sandman, played by Jack Huston, Lonnie Lincoln, aka Tombstone, played by Abraham Popoola, and Dirk Leyden, aka Megawatt, played by Andrew Lewis Caldwell. Sandman in this universe is a more grounded and gritty version of the character compared to the many other portrayals of the character but he is just as tragic and sympathetic as some of the best portrayals of him in recent media. He is a man who has endured the horrors of war and was cursed with sand-based superpowers that are slowly beginning to kill him the more he uses them. He’s not a bad person but just has had a lot of bad luck that results in him being manipulated into being a part of Silvermane’s plot to take over the city. Jack Huston does a wonderful job portraying this character, giving him so much humanity under the rough exterior and his powers, despite being much smaller in scale compared to other portrayals of the character, are incredibly well done.
The thick-skinned and super-strong Tombstone continues his steady rise to mainstream popularity with this fantastic portrayal of the character that is also given a sympathetic perspective, like Sandman, but for mostly different reasons. He has also endured the horrors of war that resulted in him gaining his powers but he also endures horrors at home. Continuous personal hardships and events force him into becoming a muscle-bound lackey for Silvermane who reluctantly helps him in achieving control of the city, which mirrors how minorities in the 1930s were pushed toward crime due to systemic economic exclusion and targeted discrimination. He shares a unique relationship with Robbie throughout the season due to their parallel hardships and he is given a deeply human performance by Abraham Popoola.
And finally we have Megawatt, a sadistic criminal with the ability to absorb and release electricity in dangerous ways similar to Electro but just not as extensive. Unlike Sandman or Tombstone, Megawatt is a full-on psychopath who absolutely delights in bringing murder and mayhem to the streets while being give a truly unhinged performance by Andrew Lewis Caldwell. This is the character’s first depiction in media outside of comics and Caldwell made sure to make it a memorable debut with his entertainingly over the top performance.
The season’s plot, like the comics, is largely inspired by 1930s noir detective fiction and fully embraces elements of those classic stories while mixing it in with gritty and grounded superhero elements from the realm of Spider-Man. It is all mixed into a perfectly blended narrative that has you hooked from start to end while not hesitating to go to wild places with its 1930s style humor, dark twists, graphic violence and surprising horror elements that it’s able to achieve creatively in a self-contained universe that has no major ties to the MCU or the Spider-Verse storyline.
While the series itself is more violent in its tone and setting compared to other adaptations of Spider-Man, it does maintain the most important staples of other Spider-Man stories, including the tragic elements and importance of community that drives the character on his path of heroism. Many familiar themes from those stories involving redemption, power, and love all play a part in this series, but is shared with themes of corruption, systematic poverty, racism, and existential dread of a post-WWI America in the height of the Great Depression.
The cast and crew were able to deliver a truly unique adaptation of Spider-Man’s story within a bleak and moody world that was built with clear amounts of passion for the character’s mythos as well as deep research of the 1930s era. It certainly has quite a lot of fun and charm you would expect from a Spider-Man story but this is a much darker and more mature one compared to what we had before, making it a very welcome and refreshing take on a frequently adapted character from Marvel’s history.
The series is presented in both authentic black and white and true-hue full color, but since it was specifically created to be black and white on all technical levels I choose to watch it in that version and it is beautiful in every single way. The aesthetic fully embraces all noir-style filming techniques, such as German Expressionist lighting, deep shadows, and highly artistic cinematography that is presented in gorgeously crisp and visually addictive black and white. No offense to the color version, which does look great, but experiencing this series in black and white is the only true way to watch it, especially for how fitting it is for the character, story, and tone. Even the action, editing, costumes, practical effects and sets look way more amazing and appealing in black and white than they do in color, even though they are magnificently crafted for both.
The only thing that didn’t look as visually perfect as the rest of the series was, unfortunately, the CGI. Now, to be very clear, it is not horrible as a whole, as there are a lot of great CGI effects present for certain characters and sequences that progressively get better every episode, but there are definitely some frequent moments of unpolished CGI effects that definitely felt like the result of a restricted budget. Given how much Amazon and Sony have been capable of funding visually stunning live-action films and shows in the past, it honestly shocks me how they seemingly choose not to fund their first live-action Spider-Man project enough to let the VFX crew of the show make it look perfect. Again, the CGI is not CW levels of horrific, but it certainly could have been better.
The series also contains a good amount of great songs from the 1930s, while also having a uniquely fitting and thrilling 1930s themed score by composers Kris Bowers and Michael Dean Parsons.
This first season of Spider-Noir was a fantastic success and very much worth the seven-year-long wait. With how much more potential these characters and the world they inhabit have to offer, I am all for seeing a second season made with better CGI and perhaps more crazy takes on Spider-Man villains in the 1930s era. Whether you are a Spider-Man fan, a Detective Noir fan, or a Nicolas Cage fan, then this is the series for you. Check it out now on Prime in both authentic black and white and true-hue full color. I’m going to give Spider-Noir Season 1 an A = 97.
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