Spider-Noir

Rated TV-14 • Prime Video

In Sony’s animated Spider-Verse movies, there are innumerable versions of Spider-Man populating countless worlds of the multiverse. Now one of the more eccentric versions—a black-and-white hardboiled iteration of Peter Parker—gets his own live-action series. Sort of.

Nicolas Cage voiced Spider-Man Noir in 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and he also plays the hero of Spider-Noir, his first lead role in a television series. But this isn’t the Peter Parker of the animated movie. This version of Spider-Man is named Ben Reilly—comic book geeks will recognize the name—and he’s got issues.

The series is set in 1930s New York City. The Great Depression has begun, Prohibition is still the law of the land, and organized crime runs rampant. Despite the city’s problems, Ben has retired from superheroing. He gave up being the Spider five years earlier after the death of his fiancée. The sudden appearance of a handful of superpowered villains will test his resolve to keep that mask hidden away.

Spider-Noir embraces the tropes and clichés of the film noir style. An unsolved crime leads into a deeper mystery in which all the players show themselves to be morally complicated. This version of Spider-Man isn’t a photographer in his day job, he’s a private investigator who ekes out a living by photographing cheating spouses. He’s mostly content to let sleeping dogs lie until a femme fatale walks into his office asking him to track down a missing person. His investigation will force him to delve into the dangerous criminal underworld. And all along the way, our protagonist wrestles with melancholy, self-doubt, and the fear that the world can’t really be saved.

In keeping with its gritty roots, the series contains a moderate amount of foul language and more gore than one usually expects to see in a superhero show. In a gimmick to play up the 1930s feel, the series is available in both black and white and “True-Hue,” a color version made to resemble the saturated look of old Technicolor films. (The black and white suits the storyline better, but it’s easier to make out the action in the color version.) Some episodes even include scenes resembling 1930s’ surrealist experimentation.

The series has a strong supporting cast. Li Jun Li plays a lounge singer and potential love interest for Ben. Irish actor Brendan Gleeson is fun to watch as the crime boss Silvermane who serves as the Spider’s nemesis. And Karen Rodriguez plays Janet, Ben’s no-nonsense yet entertaining secretary.

Cage, for his part, brings to the role the zany intensity he’s known for. He clearly enjoys both playing a middle-­aged washed-up superhero and using a gravelly Humphrey Bogart–esque accent. He begins the series with a dis­illusionment that’s only partly dispelled by the last episode. While Peter Parker’s mantra is “with great power comes great responsibility,” Ben Reilly’s is “with no power comes no responsibility.” We’re not watching the story of a hero. We’re watching a guy who once thought he could be a hero but has since changed his mind.

Spider-Noir is an interesting experiment in mashing up genres, but it might not appeal to anyone other than die-hard fans of Spider-Man or Nicolas Cage. The series is a bit too silly for connoisseurs of crime drama, and because of Ben’s reluctance, the show also contains surprisingly little superhero action.