<\/p>\n
The endlessly exploitable Spider-Man is back in \u201cSpider-Noir,\u201d a retro tale set in a recognizable New York in an inconsistent 1933 (to judge by a preponderance of cultural referents). There is a comic-book precedent for this version of the character, called simply the Spider, though research tells me that, costume and superpowers aside, he is different in nearly every respect. I don\u2019t suppose that will be an issue for most of you.<\/p>\n
Shot in \u201cauthentic\u201d black and white, the eight-episode series, which premieres Monday on MGM+ channel and streams Wednesday on Prime Video, is something of a stunt, but one that offers a reasonable, (imperfectly) period-appropriate approach to the material. (Stylistically, it belongs to a later decade.) An available colorized version, which seems primarily a sop to younger viewers who refuse to watch anything in black and white, works less well, flattening and softening the image, making the special effects look less special, the expressionist photography less expressive and ordinary scenes more artificial. You can probably tell which I\u2019d choose, but you do you.<\/p>\n
Nicolas Cage, in his first live-action television role, plays Ben Reilly, a down-at-the-heels private eye, spiking his morning coffee with whiskey helpfully provided by his knowing secretary, Janet (Karen Rodriguez), and barely scraping by on the occasional divorce case. Five years earlier, as the Spider, he was a super-powered guardian of the people; but he gave it up after the love of his life was murdered on the Spider\u2019s account. In this variation, she\u2019s the one who told him that with great power comes great responsibility, that well-worn Marvel homily, quoted in this world as if it were the work of Abraham Lincoln and not Stan Lee. <\/a>But Reilly, who calls himself a coward and claims to be no hero, regards his mutant abilities as \u201ca part of me I wish never existed. With no power, there\u2019s no responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n Naturally, in the Spider\u2019s absence, things have gone to pot in Gotham. \u201cThe city\u2019s a mess,\u201d says Reilly\u2019s best and only friend, unemployed reporter Joe \u201cRobbie\u201d Robertson (national treasure Lamorne Morris, keeping it real, relatively speaking). \u201cThe people could use a hero.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWell, I hope they find someone,\u201d says Ben.<\/p>\n Robbie Robertson (Lamorne Morris) is a journalist and Ben Reilly\u2019s best friend.<\/p>\n (Aaron Epstein\/Prime)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n Nevertheless, you will not be surprised that, much against his will, Reilly will fall into a web, tee-hee, of intrigue; involving the city\u2019s bootlegging crime boss, Silvermane (Brendan Gleeson, serving a full Irish breakfast), whose superpower is that he has very nice hair; Silvermane\u2019s sort-of mistress, femme fatale nightclub singer Cat Hardy (Li Jun Li), a bird in a gilded cage; and Cat\u2019s bodyguard, Flint (Jack Huston), who has gone missing. Nor will it shock you to learn that other super-powered entities will turn up, to give our hero \u2014 who soon enough will be swinging through town, somehow never losing the fedora perched atop his masked head \u2014 someone his own size to pick on him.<\/p>\n To coin a phrase, some are born super-powered, some become super-powered and some have superpowers thrust upon them, and in every case this comes with a serving of tragedy and trauma, for heroes and villains alike. If there\u2019s a theme to \u201cSpider-Noir,\u201d beyond \u201cmake another Spider-Man show,\u201d it\u2019s this, and there\u2019s a spine of sadness that runs through the series, its best and most depressing feature (and, taking \u201cnoir\u201d at is word, fitting to the genre).<\/p>\n The photography and production design, achieved through whatever combination of backlot shoots, dressed locations, digital environments and black magic, work better and worse (though never bad) from shot to shot, but Alfred Hitchcock used background projections and model trains, and it\u2019s nice to see Manhattan before those pencil-thin supertowers began polluting the skyline. (It\u2019s the city as King Kong<\/a> first knew it.)<\/p>\n The pacing can drag at times. The music goes everywhere but the represented period and characters quote lines from movies yet to be released. The writing and the acting boldly flirt with cliche and caricature, which, as the show is about 100% pastiche, drawn from films more than three-quarters of a century old, could scarcely be avoided and isn\u2019t really a problem. (In a way, it\u2019s the point.) You may spot a scene pinched from Orson Welles\u2019 \u201cThe Lady From Shanghai,\u201d<\/a> narrative echoes of \u201cCasablanca,\u201d a line playing off James Cagney\u2019s final words in \u201cWhite Heat,\u201d<\/a> just off the top of my head.) But the overall what and why of the story is clever and the conclusion satisfying.<\/p>\n Cage, who voiced a different version of the \u201cSpider-Noir\u201d character in the animated \u201cSpider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,\u201d is a good choice for the weary gumshoe. (The series is about 75% detective story, 25% superhero) Metafictionally, he\u2019ll bust out an Edward G. Robinson imitation, mouth Cagney dialogue sitting alone at the movies. But the main model is Humphrey Bogart, whose looks Cage\u2019s recall more than a little; Bogart played Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe in the films most associated with those characters, whose mordant humor creator-writer Oren Uziel seeks to replicate here, with fair success. One can forget that Cage, who finds a middle way between doing a bit and playing a person, is a good comic actor, and not merely a weirdo.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The endlessly exploitable Spider-Man is back in \u201cSpider-Noir,\u201d a retro tale set in a recognizable New York in an inconsistent 1933 (to judge by a preponderance of cultural referents). There is a comic-book precedent for this version of the character, called simply the Spider, though research tells me that, costume and superpowers aside, he is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2431193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2431192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Spider-Noir-review-Spider-Man-remixed-with-Humphrey-Bogart.com2Fa62Fc42F1ed4a6494324995a6f50c98d.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2431192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2431192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2431192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2431194,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2431192\/revisions\/2431194"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2431193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2431192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2431192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2431192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}