Here’s a little thought experiment for you… What if Prime Video created the first live-action Spider-Man TV show since the 1970s. But instead of your regular friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, it was a film noir-inspired version released in black and white that starred Nicolas Cage. But not as Peter Parker. Or as Spider-Man. And definitely not as the same version of a film noir Spider-hero who appears in animation in the Spider-Verse movies, where Cage voices Spider-Man Noir.
If that sounds like a series of odd choices… Well, they are. And yet the resulting eight episode series Spider-Noir is for the most part charmingly weird because of it, and lovingly filmed for black and white; a film noir pastiche anchored by an increasingly unhinged Cage over the course of the season that may not quite justify all the strange choices that got it there, but it is – no Spider-Man pun intended – a cool hang anyway.
In terms of the plot, it doesn’t swing (I’ll stop with the puns in a second) too far from your film noir tropes. Cage is Ben Reilly, a war vet and private investigator with a dead girlfriend whose untimely demise drives him to stop being the masked vigilante known as The Spider. Now a drunkard and unwilling to do anything that doesn’t pay him a few bucks, he’s watching his city get taken over by the villainous gangster Silvermane (Brendan Gleeson), who has an interest in other folks who have started exhibiting superpowers over the past few weeks, in order to consolidate his hold on the city during a contentious mayoral election.
There are other mysteries being balanced throughout, including who tried to kill Silvermane by burning down his house, or what the lounge singer Cat Hardy’s (Li Jun Li) connection is to all this. Will Ben get romantically entangled with the femme fatale? Could he possibly learn to be a hero again, alongside down-on-his-luck newspaper reporter Robbie Robertson (Lamorne Morris) and his put-upon girl Friday assistant Janet (Karen Rodriguez)? Yes, all that, plus Ben being obsessed with eating hot dogs, a drunken confession about ravioli, multiple voices and characters from Cage, and a shaggy, meandering finale that just gets goofier as it goes.
At its absolute best, Spider-Noir gorgeously apes the movies that its aiming for with stark shadows and lighting, off-kilter angles, and some intensely terrifying acting from Gleeson as a powerful gangster who defers from his comic book version, who is a cyborg, by merely being more calculating and controlling than anyone around him. It basically lets Gleeson be Gleeson, and it works. The humor mostly works too, because it usually comes out of nowhere thanks to Cage’s strange quirks as an actor.
The show, though, indulges Cage more and more as it goes on, until he starts leaning more into the spider angle than the man or noir part of the title… Take your pick. Either way, seeing Cage flail his limbs and deliver his signature cackle reminds you that you’re watching Nicolas Cage in a Spider-Man show, versus the immersive feeling the series begins with. Adding to the disparity, while Cage is perfectly coiffed, made up, and lit like a film noir anti-hero, he’s about 20 years too old for this role – and particularly with his army origin, seeing the 62 year old actor lined up as a contemporary with 40-year-olds in his former squad just doesn’t work. It also hampers the romance with Cat, which is perfunctory at best and carries no heat.
Far better is Jack Huston as Flint Marko, who finds his body turning into hard sand, and manages to convey the angst and pathos of a man whose body is betraying him; the tortured hero who seems headed for a doomed ending. Andrew Lewis Caldwell is also pretty excellent as the electric Megawatt, a failed actor who has found supervillainy to be his stage. The other part of the Sinister Trio is the usually excellent Abraham Popoola as Tombstone. He’s mostly underutilized here, though also gets to be part of the grossest scene in the season.
And on that note, not content with noir, the series also delves into old, Universal-style horror, showing how Spider-Noir could be more than an eight episode remix of noir ideas. Add in that when there is Spider-Man style action, it’s pretty thrilling to see in this setting, though nowhere near the level of what one might expect from a big screen Spidey outing.
Last thing to note here is that while the show was shot for black and white, it’s also being released in what Prime Video is calling “True Hue Full Color.” While there was an opportunity there to make this look like an old, recolored movie, instead they release the color footage that was shot and lit for black and white, but without the desaturation. And frankly, it mostly stinks. I alternated watching episodes in black and white and color (both versions were provided for critics), and while some interiors look nicely lit and pop in the color version, once the production steps outside the lighting is stark and it looks non-complimentarily like they’re on a backlot, the makeup caked on the actors. Sure you might miss a specific color cue here and there (one plot point involves red dots on slips of currency) if you watch in black and white, but the color looks and feels fake, even though it’s the actual version they shot in real life. You’ll miss, for example, the pulsing electricity on Megawatt’s face, which isn’t present in the color version, or the beautiful chiaroscuro of the lighting in a dimly lit apartment. The color actively makes the show worse.
Was Spider-Noir worth the nearly fifty year wait for a new live-action Spider-Man show? Not really, but along with other shows like Wonder Man on Disney+ and (at least as of the scant footage we’ve seen) Lanterns on HBO, 2026 is proving that superhero series don’t have to be the same blockbuster movies we’ve watched for the past decade plus, split up into hour-long chunks. Instead, Spider-Noir gives us something quirky, weird, and ready to web you with its wacky charms. With great power comes great responsibility; but with Nicolas Cage always comes something imminently intriguing and worth watching, regardless of whether it comes together at the end or not.
Spider-Noir streams weekly on MGM+ starting on May 25, and all eight episodes on Prime Video on May 27.
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