Introduction

You probably don’t need me to tell you this — but I am a hyper fan of Spider-Man. I have consumed more Spider-Man material than most people probably should. And one of my absolute favorite alternate-universe versions of the character is, without question, Spider-Man Noir. Set in a completely different reality — as many Spider-Man stories are — this particular Peter Parker wears an airman’s outfit, inhabits a black-and-white world, and carries a considerably darker edge. He has always been criminally underused in the broader franchise. So you can imagine my surprise when Spider-Noir was announced — starring Nicolas Cage, who previously voiced the character in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Across the Spider-Verse — as a live-action series. The added twist that the show could be watched in either color or black-and-white Noir mode made it sound genuinely promising. After working through all eight episodes on Amazon Prime — which is its own oddity given the character’s Marvel ties — I have quite a bit to say. Here’s our Spider-Noir review! Mild spoilers ahead, so you may want to web-swing out, finish the series first, and come back.

Story

Set in an alternate 1930s New York City, private investigator Ben Reilly (Nicolas Cage) presents as a washed-out PI — barely scraping by, struggling to keep his secretary employed, and getting on in years. By most measures, Ben should have retired long ago. What most people don’t know is that he already retired from one role — The Spider, his vigilante alter ego who once prowled the mean streets of NYC. After the death of his fiancée, Ben locked the suit away and retreated into his quiet, meager PI existence.

When a case finally lands on his desk, Ben assumes it’s a routine cheating scandal involving a high-end musician and her husband. He’s wrong. What starts as a simple job quickly resurfaces old faces from his time in WWI and pulls him into a world of people who, like him, gained powers — but at a cost. Will Ben Reilly step back into the role of The Spider, or will this case finally be what ends him?

Now — comic fans, pay close attention here. This is not the Spider-Noir from the animated films, games, or comics. There are obvious nods to the broader Spider-Man universe — Ben Reilly alone carries significant weight as a name across multiple storylines and characters, most notably the Scarlet Spider — but how he gained his powers, his history, and the majority of his story have been substantially altered. Personally, I could live with creative liberties if the result still felt like a Spider-Man story. It doesn’t. Spider-Noir feels less like a reimagining and more like a production that ran into obstacles with Marvel and Disney and pivoted hard in a different direction. Notably, the series was produced by Sony Pictures Television — which explains both how it exists and why it diverges so far from established lore.

To avoid making this entirely negative — because I did have real issues with the story — let’s start with what worked. I genuinely liked the darker, more mature themes at play here. This isn’t a young Peter Parker in his prime dispatching villains with quippy confidence. Ben Reilly is older, out of shape, and operating with powers that have atrophied from years of disuse — working and failing in equal measure. His spider sense occasionally fires, but unlike the near-omniscient warnings we’re used to seeing, it’s unreliable and inconsistent. Ben is perpetually vulnerable. He isn’t happy. He’s aging, visibly losing control of his life, and acutely aware of it. I loved this as a concept for a Spider-Man story.

But that’s where the positives hit a ceiling. Half the villains are more frustrating than compelling. Megawatt (Andrew Lewis Caldwell) plays everything like a constant stage performance — amusing briefly, then exhausting. Flint Marko/Sandman (Jack Huston) comes across as a reluctant mobster whose sand powers look less threatening and more like a severe skin condition. Tombstone (Abraham Popoola) bears almost no resemblance to his comics counterpart, reading more as a Klingon warrior transplanted into 1930s New York than the calculated, chilling presence the character demands. Their backstories all pivot on the same shared WW1 history with Ben, and none of them evolve beyond that premise in any meaningful way. In most Spider-Man narratives, Flint Marko is a genuinely tragic figure — a man whose worst mistake was an accident born of circumstance. Here, he’s largely just led around by Cat Hardy (Li Jun Li), a character whose entire arc is built around manipulation and personal convenience. It’s a waste.

There is one storyline roughly midway through the series that genuinely made me feel something — but those characters are dispatched quickly, and the manner in which they’re removed feels cheap rather than earned. Spider-Noir has the bones of something interesting. It just doesn’t do enough with them.

Acting and Cast

Nicolas Cage is an actor I love and question in roughly equal parts. In films like Lord of War, The Weather Man, and the original Ghost Rider, his particular brand of controlled strangeness works beautifully. In Spider-Noir, I struggled to figure out what he was going for. There are moments where he physically contorts in ways that do feel genuinely spider-like — and then he’ll break into a broad 1930s New York accent that lands closer to parody than period authenticity. When he’s in the suit as The Spider, the performance is more grounded and works considerably better. But Cage is on screen for roughly 85% of the series, and the inconsistency becomes impossible to ignore. His voice is iconic for this character in the animated films — but here, he appears to be chasing that same energy in live action, and it simply doesn’t translate the way it needs to.

Beyond Cage, the cast is genuinely uneven. Li Jun Li as Cat Hardy does a serviceable job and generates the right mix of appeal and suspicion that the character requires — that part works. Lamorne Morris as Joe “Robbie” Robertson — Ben’s trusted confidant who is aware of his alter ego and attempts to use that relationship to rebuild his own journalism career — is charming and likeable throughout. And Brendan Gleeson as Silvermane is, without question, the best performance in the series. He brings a weathered, genuine menace to the Irish mob boss that holds up from his first scene to his last. He alone consistently delivers.

I want to be clear — I don’t dislike anyone in this cast. In other projects, many of them are exceptional. I just feel that several of them were pushed into roles that don’t play to their strengths, or worse, were given characters without enough depth to do anything meaningful with. Before I close this section, I want to give real credit to Karen Rodriguez as Ben’s secretary Janet Ruiz — she is funny, effortlessly charming, and one of the most consistently enjoyable presences in the entire series.

Cinematography and Direction

What genuinely saves Spider-Noir — and what is unambiguously excellent — is the cinematography and direction. As noted earlier, Amazon Prime lets you watch the series in two modes: the classic black-and-white Noir format or True-Hue Full Color, which cranks the saturation to vibrant, almost stylized levels. I watched the majority of the series in black and white — it simply looks stunning in that format — but the color version is equally valid and makes the world feel entirely different. There is no wrong way to watch Spider-Noir, and offering both options was a genuinely inspired creative decision.

Beyond the visual modes, the camera work throughout makes the show feel like a living graphic novel. Characters consistently pop against their environments in a way that feels almost deliberately heightened — like watching a video game rendered with real people. Even in the black-and-white format, the compositions draw your eye exactly where they need to go and hold it there. Director and showrunner Oren Uziel (The Cloverfield Paradox, Escape Room: Tournament of Champions) deserves significant credit for making nearly every scene visually compelling regardless of what’s happening in it narratively. The final fight sequence in particular is a standout — everything the visual language of the show was building toward, delivered exactly as it should be.

Conclusion

Did I hate Spider-Noir? No. Do I need a second season? Also no. But I won’t call it a terrible series either — there’s genuine charm buried in here if you know where to look. I laughed plenty at the goofier moments, The Spider’s action sequences are legitimately excellent, and the opening song — “Saving Grace” by Kirby — is one I never once skipped, both for how great it sounds and how well it sets the visual tone. Die-hard Spider-Man fans will find plenty to both love and argue about, and those with more casual ties to the character will likely feel similarly divided. Spider-Noir does a lot wrong — but just enough right to be a watchable, occasionally fun ride that I simply won’t be revisiting anytime soon.