‘Spider-Noir’ Season 1 Review: Nicolas Cage Swings Big Through A Gorgeous Uneven Noir Fever Dream

Anyone expecting executive producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller to put their stamp on Prime Video’s new streaming series Spider-Noir will be sorely disappointed. The series goes out of its way to avoid self-awareness, swatting away any meta sensibilities. Rarely inventive and never playful, it lacks the absurd humor, emotional sincerity, and genuine heart that define the duo’s best work.

That’s not to say Spider-Noir doesn’t work on its own terms, with a distinct style and tone. Showrunners Oren Uziel (22 Jump Street) and Steve Lightfoot (The Punisher) combine comic-book sensibilities, horror, and hard-boiled, character-driven noir. Themes of trauma and psychology run throughout as the writers navigate crime, corruption, violence, and their consequences, leaving these characters swimming in moral ambiguity.

The result is darker, character-driven, and morally ambiguous. However, perhaps for the first time, whether you watch the series in “Authentic Black & White” or “True-Hue Full Color” may significantly affect your enjoyment.

What is Prime Video’s Spider-Noir About?

Not to mention, some of the cast’s performances simply don’t mesh. That brings us to Oscar-winner Nicolas Cage, who plays private dick Ben Reilly. A veteran of the Second World War, Reilly is stuck in the mud, grappling with trauma from his time as a soldier and his personal life. Ben turns going on a bender into an Olympic sport, which gets in the way of his moonlighting as The Spider, the sole superhero operating in 1930s New York City.

However, an incredible case falls into his lap, courtesy of his capable and, more importantly, sober secretary, Janet (the feisty Karen Rodriguez), who insists he take the job because they need the money. The client is a gorgeous damsel in distress, a lounge singer with ties to Silvermane (Brendan Gleeson), an Irish mob boss who controls everything in the city, including the mayor (The Wire’s Michael Kostroff) and his team of political officials.

However, as the show progresses, we see the client, Cat Hardy (Li Jun Li of Sinners fame), as a femme fatale. She approaches Ben because her associate Flint (Jack Huston) has gone missing. However, the information Cat offers is, as Ben puts it, life chasing ghosts. Helping him investigate the case is his best friend, Robbie Robertson (Emmy-nominee Lamorne Morris), a freelance journalist, who, unlike Ben, uses the truth to advance his career.

Prime Video’s Spider Noir Review

No studio has ever offered viewers, simultaneously and on this scale, the choice of watching a series in either full Technicolor or rich black and white. For my money, the producers made a mistake here with Spider-Noir. A far more interesting choice would have been to present The Spider in black and white while keeping private detective Ben Reilly’s story in color, obviously creating a distinct visual contrast between the man and the myth.

Going with black and white better suits the show’s tone. However, when viewed in color, the contrast is almost distracting, as the creative team embraces an almost maximalist approach. The True-Hue Full Color presentation feels Schumacher-esque. While the storytelling is rooted in noir, a genre typically defined by shadows, restraint, and minimalism, those qualities are in short supply here.

To say the series is a slow burn would be an understatement. The show takes a while to find its footing, striking noir gold with episode four, “A Mistake I’ll Never Make Again,” and catching lightning in a bottle with the genre-bending delights of episode five, “Betrayal,” the season’s standout chapter. The remaining episodes, like the first three, do not just embrace noir conventions but fetishize them to the point of becoming a self-parody.

Is Prime Video’s Spider-Noir Worth Watching?

The visual concept is undeniably ambitious, and cinematographer Darran Tiernan (The Penguin) helps carry the story with deep shadows, expressionistic framing, striking silhouettes, and classic noir touches such as smoke-filled atmospherics and high-contrast lighting. The money spent is evident throughout, as the attention to period detail, elaborate set designs, costuming, and special effects transports viewers to another time and place.

Of course, if you came for the genre and something offbeat, you likely came for the Nic Cage experience. His heightened performance can be distracting at times, but it is always engaging and consistently entertaining. Yet it is Li Jun Li who, in my opinion, delivers an award-worthy performance, bringing one of the series’ few truly three-dimensional characters while bringing emotional complexity and true screen presence.

Li is sensational here, tough, moving, sexy, and at times, heartbreaking. This is textbook genre awareness that never falls into parody.

This, and other qualities, make Spider-Noir is worth watching despite rejecting the playful, meta sensibilities associated with Lord Miller Productions. Instead, it embraces hard-boiled noir, horror, and psychological drama, while never forgetting its gangster-noir iconography, comic-book expressionism, and pulp fiction-inspired storyline. Simply put, the series is different than almost anything on streaming or network television.

While the story doesn’t always stick the landing, and the pacing may test the audience’s patience, in an era of interchangeable comic-book content, the series’ ambition is worth applauding, even if the show occasionally buckles under the weight of its own artistic aspirations.

You can stream the complete first season of Spider-Noir exclusively on Prime Video starting May 27th!