Spider-Noir's eight episodes are available on Prime Video in two different formats: True-Hue Full Colour and Authentic Black & White. Given that the former is an absolute abomination that renders the images chintzy and flat, it is much, much better to watch the entire show in Black & White. The long shadows and canted angles sharply define 1930s New York City in this monochromatic palette. The images feel more alive, and some of the stylistic flourishes, like a woman shooting at multiple mirror reflections, offer genuine aesthetic pleasures. The "noir style" is employed for embellishment, and for a while, you don't mind soaking in the beauty of the images. These little gratifications, alas, are completely superficial. They don't stem from the characters' psychology, nor do they bring psychological depth to the images. The film noir veneer of Spider-Noir is akin to eye-pleasing wallpaper applied over the walls of a creaky, stinky apartment. It is, in a way, not so different from Wonder Man, which borrowed a sitcom-like tone to hide the stench of its safe storytelling and outdated superhero conventions. Spider-Noir does much the same thing by dipping itself in film noir conventions.
There is a detective, a femme fatale, her lover, and a gangster. What Spider-Noir does with them is assign them familiar labels and deploy them as copies of copies—imitations of figures borrowed from early black-and-white crime thrillers. What's left, then, is simply a collection of mannerisms that serve as reminders. Put these "types" in a formulaic superhero show, and they become thinner, more depersonalized—they resemble walking, talking stick figures. Everything and everybody, from the overall aesthetic to the actors, seem to be playing dress-up for the Halloween season. While watching Spider-Noir, I was never convinced by any of the performances. I knew something major was amiss, but struggled to put my finger on it. I got my answer, however, as soon as I went through the show's Wikipedia page. There, I learned that Nicolas Cage modeled his performance on Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, and Edward G. Robinson.
What Cage has actually done is absorb those films and performances so deeply into his DNA that he has little of his own distinct style to offer here. In fact, his own instincts clash with those inspirations, and the result is an oddly exhausted performance. Cage seems conflicted, constricted. He exists passively on the screen rather than leaping across it with vigor. One can remark that his Ben Reilly/The Spider is rusty and occasionally grief-stricken—he pants whenever he has to do action. But Cage, who has also said that his performance is "30 percent Bugs Bunny," doesn't infuse his tumbling and huffing and puffing with the zest of an accidental jester. The show misses the opportunity to turn his onscreen shakiness into a source of physical comedy. Cage is devoid of both personality and humor.
Similarly, Li Jun Li, whose Cat Hardy is reportedly an amalgamation of Anna May Wong, Rita Hayworth, Lauren Bacall, and Kim Basinger, emerges from the shadows not with sexual cunning or manipulative charm, but with the air of someone carefully following a blueprint for a femme fatale. If Lois Lane jumped into Niagara Falls so that Clark Kent would reveal his secret identity to her, Cat Hardy jumps from a window with a similar intention—to force Ben to come out as The Spider. When, say, Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity crosses her legs and, with suggestive language, hooks her target, you are absorbed and hypnotized by her very presence. It would not be fair to compare Jun Li with Stanwyck; nonetheless, the point is that the former does nothing to you here. She looks good, though she doesn't exude the captivating sensuality that makes men ignore all the red flags and dive headfirst into the arms of danger.
Brendan Gleeson, as a mob boss named Silvermane, comes across as mild and genial. Is he supposed to be funny? If yes, how should we respond to the scene where he casually points his gun at Cat Hardy, threatening to shoot her? I was never sure how to take this mob boss. When he's on the screen, he feels as insignificant as an extra. When he dies, it doesn't feel like much of a loss at all. I think only Andrew Lewis Caldwell, as Megawatt, manages to elicit the kind of performance the creators seem to have been aiming for. With plenty of hate and arrogance, Caldwell makes Megawatt a repulsive villain. He displays the precise amount of theatricality this production requires. The actor effectively summons what others fail to bring to the show. He uses the dramatic shortcuts well, infusing life into his one-note supervillain.
A character mentions the Depression in passing in a jokey tone, and in one scene, some police officers are seen beating up Black people. Spider-Noir, however, has nothing of substance to say about the politics of 1930s America. The references to war and racist attitudes exist as playful winks and nudges (a Black journalist's colleagues stare at him with a mixture of shock and disgust while he smiles and waves at them). These moments are weightless or, rather, function as distractions from the clichés affecting Spider-Noir. When a desperate mother is introduced searching for a cure for her son, you immediately sense that the duo won't be allowed a happy ending. This thread exists to inject some sentimentality—the mother and son are confined to their basic function in the script, so they stand out as obvious emotional triggers. But they don't move you because their shallow purpose is wholly evident.
It's not nostalgia for classic film noirs that drives Spider-Noir. What showrunners Oren Uziel and Steve Lightfoot are after is something far simpler: they decorate the screen with dark shadows and Dutch angles to produce a shiny, glossy cover. Unwrap the packaging, and you will find typical Marvel-y ingredients and thin characters. What was Ben's relationship with his wife like before and after he became a superhero? The show stays mum. Instead, it merely uses her death as an excuse to construct a comeback story for The Spider—it's almost like Daredevil: Born Again if you replace the wife's death with that of a best friend's. If Ben's past is nothing more than a collection of bullet points, his present is one long, bland narrative with neither juice nor invention. Spider-Noir is ultimately just another unremarkable superhero venture. A more appropriate title for it might well be Spider-Snore.
Final Score - [4/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times