CABLE | Nicolas Cage Investigates 'Spider-Noir' on Prime Video

"People will fight for what little they have."

Sony Pictures Television / Amazon MGM Studios

Spider-Noir, the live-action television adaptation of Spider-Man Noir, the 2009 alternate-universe Marvel Comics spin-off webslinger character most widely seen in the Oscar-winning animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and famously voiced by Nicolas Cage, who reprises his role in the flesh this time, is an amusing throwback to the hard-boiled detective film genre. Showrun by screenwriters Oren Uziel and Steve Lightfoot and executive produced by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the television series overtly but lovingly leans heavily into its classic film noir influences.

Cage's trademark unique acting style and presence fit the pulpy tone of the 1930s New York City setting to a tee as this version of Spider-Man (aka "the Spider"), with Lamorne Morris, Li Jun Li, Jack Huston, Brendan Gleeson, and a host of guest stars co-starring as period-appropriate, otherworldly versions of his famous supporting cast of reminagined sidekicks and rogues' gallery turned into noir archetypes like the femme fatale or big heavy. Ben Reilly, a renamed Peter Parker substitute and not the controversial blonde-haired clone (aka the "Scarlet Spider") from the comics, has long given up the crimefighter superhero mantle after the tragic death of his wife and now spends his days as a disillusioned P.I.

Reilly spends the season investigating a series of criminal conspiracies involving super-powered individuals with mysterious ties to a group of POW soldiers during WWI. Told within the television structure of something akin to Perry Mason, Spider-Noir is chock-full of cinematic references, from Chinatown to The Maltese Falcon and other Depression-era detective gumshoe yarns starring the likes of Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson, as well as comic serials such as Dick Tracy or The Spirit.

Broadcast in both high-contrast, "authentic" black-and-white and "true-hue" full technicolour, Spider-Noir wisely only has the loosest of ties to the greater Spider-Verse continuity. While everybody commits to the costume-genre schtick, over the course of a season, the shadowy comic book film noir series loses its freshness outside the familiar confines of a contained, two-hour period film.

Spider-Noir's eight-episode season is available to stream on both MGM+ and Amazon Prime Video.


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