Review by C.J. Bunce
If you share an idea enough, it may just come to fruition. Like Nicolas Cage as a live-action version of The Spider. As soon as audiences heard Cage’s voice behind the black-and-white character Noir in 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, it was a no-brainer. Sony Pictures Television Studios and Amazon MGM Studios made it happen with Spider-Noir, and the result is the best superhero TV series since Bill Bixby played Banner in The Incredible Hulk. Three hundred series and movies have appeared since, but this faithful take on crime noir mixed with comic book angles and action that pulls comics right off the page in both black and white and color is simply like nothing anyone has seen before. Couple Cage’s best performance yet opposite Brendan Gleeson creating the best onscreen super-villain ever, and you have a series that reminds everyone why generations love comic book characters–and we still love film noir.
It’s the kind of presentation Warren Beatty gave his best effort with his 1990 movie Dick Tracy–the creative team behind Spider-Noir could make a better adaptation of Chester Gould’s chiseled detective. But more importantly what showrunners Oren Uziel and Steve Lightfoot and executive producer duo Christopher Miller and Phil Lord demonstrate here is that they are the right team to adapt Frank Miller’s landmark The Dark Knight Returns comics into live-action after 40 years of crickets from DC Entertainment. This series could be the audition tape for that project and a template for getting that project underway. What better time to make it happen than for its 40th anniversary?
Let’s dig into the monumental superhero series Spider-Noir.
You never want to say, “I told you so”–some ideas are so good you can’t imagine someone screwing them up. But any good idea still could be poorly executed. The work done by the leadership on this film, however, incorporated intricacies of filmmaking that–in the superhero genre–has only been matched by the Academy Award-nominated Logan–also released in both color and black and white. In countless cinema books reviewed at borg, directors and production designers past and present have told us how difficult it is to replicate classic black and white film style. Compensating for light and shadow isn’t easy. Making a version that is equally compelling in color is another challenge. Here that “Tru-Hue Color” cut manifested in a stunning array of costumes and set pieces. As for the black and white, this is uip there with the cinematography of Roma and Mank.
Which way should you watch the series? Don’t binge it–it’s much too good to binge. You’ll want to savor it. We watched each black and white episode followed by the Tru-Hue Color edition right after, making a great two-hour movie experience of a sort. The genius of the black and white version is in its authenticity. That arrives in two parts. First, the story and the characters are straight out of an Erle Stanley Gardner crime novel. If you loved this series, go pull any of his Cool and Lam novels. Second, the series looks as good as your favorite classic noir film. Forget about the biggies everyone has seen, for me a grimy, garden variety noir came to mind: D.O.A. But there’s more. Brendan Gleeson as Silvermane, with his incredible ease and dialect and ability to understand mob types, matched the classic acting from guys known for tough guy roles, especially James Cagney. Nicolas Cage in turn delivered the goods, creating a downtrodden detective with his own set of unique quirks. Think Dana Andrews and Robert Mitchum. Even the supporting players got it right at every level, like mouthy street urchin Franky played by Cary Christopher. His direction smartly made him more Dead End Kids than Our Gang–and a perfect addition to the show.
Spider-Noir tells the story of Ben Reilly, a past-his-prime, down on his luck private investigator in 1930s New York who is forced to grapple with his past life as the city’s one and only superhero. The story starts with his flat-out rejection of more superheroics. He’s done. Cage plays it calm and cool when confronted by mob elements, but when Ben is cornered and out of options he lets go in only the way Cage in full-Cage mode can do. His attention to detail and his own ability to make movie magic is why Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse will probably never be surpassed for animated Marvel–his voice work for this character in that movie was the best of its secondary players. He’s done the superhero thing more than anyone. He appeared as Big Daddy in Kick-Ass after almost starring in a Tim Burton Superman movie years ago, then came back to play that Superman in a cameo scene in the movie The Flash. He’s played Ghost Rider twice. It was all building toward this.
Lamorne Morris (Saturday Night, New Girl) enters the scene as Bugle reporter Robbie Robertson. His character is a classic noir archetype, the hero detective’s best pal, and doubles the role often played by the friendly policeman in pulp noir stories. If you only watched the black and white version you’d totally miss costume designer Trayce Gigi Field’s most stylish and colorful creations. Best of all Morris and Cage have chemistry.
The series co-stars Karen Rodriguez as Janet, Reilly’s Gal Friday. She doesn’t get much to do other than be supportive of Ben, especially his alcohol consumption, which is the only element overdone in the show. To be fair, classic noir overdid the drink and smokes, too. Like the type in classic noir stories, Rodriguez plays Janet quick, smart and savvy, and cute. Most importantly her eyebrow is always raised and she doesn’t take any guff from Ben.
That leaves the other classic archetype–the Damsel in Distress, who often doubles in good twisty noir style as the Femme Fatale. Li Jun Li’s Cat Hardy is a bit of both. Li belts out some sultry songs evocative of the era while also adding some modern rifs and flare. She is completely endearing in her concern for both Ben and Jack Huston’s Flint aka Sandman. And she gets to take probably the biggest step of everyone in character growth in the season finale. A second season should hang its hat on a returning Cat–after all, ask yourself why would she let herself fall off a roof to hopefully be rescued by Ben, after guessing he is The Spider, unless she has secret “Cat” powers herself? If Ben wasn’t The Spider then she would have landed on her feet to reveal herself as The Cat of the comics. With only eight 45-minute episodes this team just didn’t get that far.
But that’s only the beginning. The show introduced four strong henchmen in addition to Huston’s Flint: Lukas Haas plays Winston, and he plays him like an actor 20 years older would. If you ever liked James Woods in his early years you’ll find similar acting talent in Haas here. Abraham Popoola and Jack Mikesell are sympathetic as ex-soldiers tortured by the Germans in World War I. Then there’s Andrew Lewis Caldwell as Dirk Leyden aka Megawatt. Dirk is thoroughly annoying in every scene. He’s way over the top as an ex-stage attendant and wannabe actor who quotes Shakespeare and others as part of his supervillain shtick. The too much part is probably okay considering the loud-mouth mob types in classic Hollywood productions. Blend his dialogue with his superpower mastery of electricity–and the vivid way the visual effects team makes it happen–and he’s a classic comic book character you’d find in old copies of The Shadow or Miss Fury (by the way, this team could also finally give us a Miss Fury live-action show).
And that’s not all. For more fun they added in Bosch veteran Amy Aquino as a scientist and Dirty Harry and Deep Space Nine veteran Andrew Robinson as her assistant. Their participation in the story leads to the reveal of one of the show’s key mysteries.
A lifelong comic book connoisseur, Cage was born to portray superheroes–going so far early in his career as renaming himself from Nicolas Coppola to Nicolas Cage after Marvel’s Luke Cage. So he’s perfect for the banter, the humor, the web-slinging and web-swinging. He does the chases, the car crashes, and takes the hero pummeling the genre requires of him. He also can dish it out. His ad hoc work in showing Ben in various states of spider-consciousness, like his feigned tai chi, is superb and funny. Nicolas Cage truly is an American treasure. The Irish treasure is Oscar-nominated actor Brendan Gleeson, who has dazzled audiences from his work in Braveheart through his work as Mad-Eye Moody in the Harry Potter movies, to The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and The Banshees of Inisherin. If you think Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino stand alone, think again. Gleeson’s turn as Silvermane rivaled the much lauded super-villain performance by fellow countryman Colin Farrell in The Penguin.
Finally it wouldn’t be noir without a good mystery. This is a detective story with sharp writing thanks to writers Megan Liao, Jennifer Frazin, and Jack Henderson, in addition to Uziel and Lightfoot. You could introduce new audiences to noir with this series and any number of beloved noir classics with none the wiser.
Spider-Noir fits into the Spidey world of Sony’s other live-action Marvel movies, including specifically the most popular series after Tom Holland’s Spider-Man trilogy, Tom Hardy’s Venom series, but upfront Cage’s hero mentions this is part of an alternate world. Nobody at Marvel is probably brave enough to introduce Cage’s The Spider into the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it sure would be fun if they did. Don’t miss this series–one of our nominees for best superhero series and best series of 2026. See why we think it’s the best superhero series yet. All eight episodes of Spider-Noir are streaming now on Prime Video.
