By Josh Nason
Look, I don’t blame you if you have never heard of Spider-Noir and I’m guessing plenty of viewers of the upcoming series on Amazon Prime are going to be completely confused as to why Spider-Man is all “old-timey.”
Let me see if I can explain: a few years back in the Spider-Man comics, they really delved hard into multiverse lore (the “Spiderverse”) as part of a storyline that became a breakout hit and then spawned off different comics featuring some of those characters.
One of them that seemed to resonate was Spider-Noir, a 1930s era version of Spider-Man named Ben Reilly, the name of a Spider-Man clone from the comics that was thought to be killed and then, re-emerged decades later along with another clone named Kaine.
Did I lose you yet?
Anyway, Sony has the rights to the Spider-Man characters when it comes to any film and movie project and are now launching their first TV project with Amazon since the attempt at Spiderverse movies but without Spider-Man fizzled out quite badly.
Enter Nicolas Cage who was once rumored to play Superman in a movie, but instead is now seemingly starring in a movie every other month. He plays Reilly/The Spider in a role that he is doing as “70% Humphrey Bogart/30% Bugs Bunny.” Alright, then.
The eight episode series will be dropped all at once (not a great sign but it did work for the first season of Fallout) and will be released in both black and white and “True Hue” color as were both trailers that dropped last week and got a healthy amount of views (10 million combined on Amazon’s YouTube account with nine million on the black & white one alone).
In the trailers, there’s a few characters that comic fans will know (Flint Marko/Sandman, Silvermane, Cat Hardy/Black Cat, Robbie Robertson) and a few that are yet to be revealed (I think Electro is one of them). We’re not talking full-on costumed comic bad guys on screen, but a 1930s interpretation if you’re into that kind of thing.
I’m a big Spider-Man fan, actually went to ALL of the Sony movies in the theatre and paid to do so, meaning I will have to watch this entire series. It’s in my DNA. A sucker is born every minute. But my expectations are low. I like Cage, but this might be too campy for my tastes and I’m not expecting a lot out of the special effects.
It’s an IP play by both Sony and Amazon, so it is what it is. My gut instinct is a lot of people will drop off after the first episode as they will be expecting something more Marvel-style.
Spider-Noir drops on Amazon Prime Wednesday, May 27th.
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