SPIDER-NOIR is the Multiverse Saga we Deserved - REVIEW & Breakdown

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]Welcome back to Screen Crush. I'm Ryan Ary, and let's talk about Spider Noir.

[00:00:03]So, should you watch this show? Yes. I think it's great. Hold on. There's a lot more to say. I'm going to give you a mostly spoiler-free overview of the show and talk about how it stacks up against the multiverse stories of the MCU, and then I'll explain some of the multiverse stories that I wish Marvel had been telling for the past few years. So, Nicholas Cage returns as Spider-Man Noir after voicing the character in the Spider-Verse movies. Sometimes I let matches burn down to my fingertips just to feel something, anything.

[00:00:30]>> Cage is a lifelong comic book fan and he reportedly still goes to the shop every Wednesday. He was at one point going to play Superman, which we talked about at length in this video. And of course, he's made two Ghost Rider films that I still have not seen. You haven't? It's a thing. We're going to do it as part of our members only watch parties. Anyways, this project is the perfect vehicle for a Nicholas Cage comic book film. The show is set in a stylized 1930s New York and is told in the genre of film noir.

[00:00:54]Now, this is a film style popularized in the 1930s that always features tropes like a hard-boiled flawed leading man with a tragic backstory. Yeah, I don't follow.

[00:01:02]>> Like Eddie Valiant and Roger Rabbit.

[00:01:04]>> Oh, yeah. Okay. Now, the genre also features a fem fatal, a complex mystery, and tropes like the rundown detective office. And by the way, Nicholas Cage is perfect in this setting. He follows through on the choice that he made in Spider Moore. He is doing a riff on the classic Humphrey Bogart character Sam Spade.

[00:01:20]>> People lose teeth talking like that.

[00:01:22]>> The ape speaks. The series plays like all of the film noir cliches you've ever seen rolled into one but told through the lens of a superhero comeback story.

[00:01:30]Cage gets to do all these zingy oneliners.

[00:01:32]>> Say you're kind of handsome.

[00:01:34]>> No, I'm questioning your eyesight.

[00:01:36]>> But he also gets to go full Cage and overact.

[00:01:39]>> The second floor. The second floor. The second floor.

[00:01:43]>> All right.

[00:01:43]>> And I just have to say we suspect that there's a weird legal thing with this show where he's not allowed to call himself Peter Parker because of how Marvel and Sony are sharing the rights to the character. That's why he calls himself Ben Riley, but they casually mention that he changed his name after the war. So, yes, that's a cool way to reassure us that this is a variant of Peter Parker. So, the show is rounded out with great character actors, a veritable who's who of hey, that guy.

[00:02:05]Leon Morris as Robbie Robertson, the great Brendan Gleon as Silver Main, Boardwalk Empire's Jack Houston as Sandman, Michael Kroth as Mayor Morris.

[00:02:12]Like, every corner of this show is filled with actors who fully understood the assignment and the setting.

[00:02:18]>> Oh no, it's the boys in blue. Oh no.

[00:02:23]Even Silverman gets some great character shading, and we understand why he grew up to be such a ruthless crime lord.

[00:02:29]>> I lost two brothers before I was even born. It was madness what I experienced.

[00:02:33]>> All of the villains in this show have tragic backstories of their own. And like Riley, that trauma stems from World War I. It makes sense that Riley, a hard-boiled detective in the 30s, would have trauma stemming from his time in battle. We rarely get to see an older Spider-Man who is cynical and genuinely wants out of the life. Because with no power comes no responsibility.

[00:02:53]>> His spider sense plays like shell shock from the war. Like it's painful for him to use his abilities. Just like the memory of violence can cause pain to our veterans. The villain's abilities manifest as mutations that turn them into freaks. And so this becomes a metaphor for how society rejected disfigured veterans after the war. Jack Houston played a similar role in Boardwalk Empire as an assassin who is missing half his face and isn't fully accepted by society. In the comics, Spider-Man Noir gets his powers from a magical amulet. But in the show, it's from experimentation by German scientists to win the war. See, World War I reinvented industrial warfare. It was a time when human beings were learning how to use machines in order to slaughter one another in numbers that were inconceivable to previous generations. So, by tying Riley's origin to the war, they're linking him with the trauma of this generation. One of the best episodes of the series features an extended dream sequence where Riley reles his war trauma. It's very trippy and David Lynch inspired, and I think it plays way better when you watch it in black and white. And there's also a moment where we see Riley's origin. It's also in the trailers, by the way, where he's bitten by a mutated spider.

[00:04:01]It's especially horrifying when you watch in black and white. I mean, that's how I watch everything. True. And I know some of you guys are wondering, how should you watch this show? So, actually Nicholas Cage told Esquire magazine that he thinks both formats are good, but he recommends the colorized version for younger viewers and black and white for adults. And I will say the color version is highly saturated like the early Technicolor films or the Pulp magazine covers of this era. It's highly stylized and it really pops out when you set it alongside the bland coloring of most streaming shows. But for me, black and white version is the way to go. The darker shadows really draw you in. They just make the characters pop. And Cage's drawn haunted face just looks right when you see it in shades of gray. And the cinematography often mimics the Dutch angles and shadows made popular by the German expressionist cinema of this era.

[00:04:46]Now, some sequences like the musical number in the club should absolutely be seen in full color, but the black and white sets a tone for the viewer that color just can't match. Now, I've watched a lot of superhero TV shows, and Spider Noir is a breath of fresh air.

[00:04:59]Usually, these shows eventually will fall into predictable formulas like in the Arowverse or they're just flatout bland like Secret Invasion. Spider Noir, like Creature Commandos, has the courage to stand out from the superhero subgenre and try something different. It's just great to have a superhero story with a new angle, a theme, and a setting that is different from a shared cinematic universe. And this really got me thinking. Spider Noir is an example of the multiverse saga that we should have had, right? Well, look, I don't want to crap all over Marvel. I actually think the Multiverse Saga is underrated and has turned out some really great projects like Wakanda Forever for example. But in Marvel's Infinity Saga phases 1 through 3, they were great about giving each movie a separate genre to riff on. Like Captain America: First Avenger was a World War I film with stylized backgrounds that even looked like war propaganda posters, while Winter Soldier was in a political thriller which was mapped on the plot of Three Days of the Condor. The first Thor movie was a fantasy epic, while Ragnarok had the vibe of an 80s science fiction flick. Iron Man 3 was a Shane Black movie and all the Guardians films were pop heavy space adventures. Marvel wanted to make each film feel like its own thing, even though it was set in the same cinematic universe. But lately, that's kind of ended. I mean, Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantum Mania wasn't a light-hearted comedy like the first two films. It was a visual effects heavy Marvel movie. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is underrated, and it had really strong horror elements, but ultimately it was tied to staying with the story of MCU characters like Wanda Maximoff. In the multiverse saga, the films have also been less stylized.

[00:06:27]They're not taking inspiration from other movies. They're taking inspiration from other Marvel movies. The TV shows actually have been able to change up genre somewhat with She-Hulk structured like a sitcom and Loki riffing on Doctor Who. And Wision, of course, melded the sitcom format with the MCU style, but none of these projects stood out because they were set in different universes.

[00:06:45]For instance, it's not like She-Hulk was set in a sitcom universe. It actually to me feels like the creatives have been restrained by the confines of the cinematic universe. And this is a shame because the multiverse saga is when theoretically Marvel could have just gotten [ __ ] weird. The saga introduced us to the multiverse in Endgame with the concept of branching timelines. Then the show Loki carried on the concept by introducing us to the idea of variance from other realities.

[00:07:09]And then the saga mostly stuck with this idea, variance. Let's see different versions of your favorite characters.

[00:07:15]What if season 1 and two had some great spins on this concept? What if Doctor Strange went too far and turned evil?

[00:07:21]What if Peggy Carter got superpowers?

[00:07:23]And the multiverse saga's also been great for cameos and nostalgia baiting.

[00:07:26]I mean, it was really fun to see the three Spider-Man interact.

[00:07:29]>> I was in the Avengers.

[00:07:30]>> The Avengers?

[00:07:31]>> Yeah, >> that's great. Thank you. What is that?

[00:07:33]>> Is that a band? Are you in a band?

[00:07:35]>> And also to get call backs to all those films you grew up with.

[00:07:38]>> You know, I'm something of a scientist myself.

[00:07:41]>> How are you trying to do better?

[00:07:43]>> But instead of embracing the boldness of a show like Spider Noir, the show What If was fairly cautious. Like for instance, in season 2, there was an episode called 1602 that was set in medieval times. But then they felt that they had to explain that, hey, this is just two universes mashed together. I mean, just just make a medieval Marvel universe. That sounds like fun. You don't have to explain why it's medieval.

[00:08:02]Just do it. I mean, I think what if really soared in the Marvel Zombies episode and the spin-off series because this setting allowed the creatives to completely unleash and have some fun with the genre. The western episode was a good try, but for me it just seemed like a western episode for the sake of it. And there was no reason for these particular characters to be tied to a western setting. And I was so jazzed about Fantastic 4: First Steps because of their decision to set the film in an alternate retro future New York City of the 1960s. But then there was really no reason for the film to be in the 1960s, was there? I mean, apart from the sweet ass production design, the characters all behave as if they live in modern day, and they really don't act anything like the FF in the 1960s comics, which is probably a good thing cuz they were very sexist. Now, if you shifted this Fantastic 4 team to a modern setting, the only difference in the film would be that today it would be a lot harder to unite the world against Galactus. But in the utopic 1960s of Universe 828, it's barely a plot point. Whereas Spider Noir shows us what if the MCU were a little less concerned with continuing the story of their cinematic universe. For example, imagine a Shangi movie set in the gritty 1970s New York. Shoot it on film, add that grain, use the cheesy zooms that were a trademark of kung fu films of that era. Like, I like Shani a lot, and I hope we get a lot more Shani films. But the Multiverse saga offered a brief window when filmmakers could have created different genre spins on all of these characters. Or think of Thor: Love and Thunder. It was locked into continuing the story of current-day Thor and Jane Foster. But imagine if they were able to approach the story with a fresh concept. Kind of like how in the Ultimate Comics, Thor is a hippie with a special belt and most people think he's just an insane guy who thinks he's Thor.

[00:09:40]Or give us a proper old man Logan, where an elderly Wolverine roams a desert ruled by super villains. Or future imperfect, where Hulk encounters his evil future self. Think of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, where the multiverse barely figured into the movie. I mean, it was mostly focused on three universes with a brief run through a bunch of others. A true multiversal film, I don't know, could have followed a different version of Steven Strange as the protagonist, who then later in the movie meets our original Steven. And I understand why Marvel didn't do this. I mean, the appeal of a cinematic universe is that it is interconnected and you get to follow the story of these characters across many different movies. For instance, there is a great Tanahesi Coats comic about the intergalactic Wakandan Empire. This is an alternate universe where the Wakandons conquer all of known space and it's a story about colonialism and legends. It's a great comic. Unfortunately, it would have been really weird for viewers to watch Black Panther and then roll up and suddenly be in a different universe where the Wakandons rule all of space. In fact, the best multiverse films aren't even part of the multiverse saga. The Spider-Verse movies show us how to do the multiverse right. We don't just meet other versions of Peter Parker, but their universes are also very different and heavily stylized to reflect their different genres. These are radically different worlds that have a different cinematic color and language, and they use the multiverse as a way to tell different stories. The Multiverse Saga was, I think, conceived as a way to bring the X-Men into the MCU while also paying tribute to the original Marvel universe. This is a fun way to mash together IP so we can see like Mystique fight Elena Bova or Peter 3 redeem himself for not saving Gwyn.

[00:11:14]>> Are you okay?

[00:11:15]>> Yeah, I'm okay. Are you okay?

[00:11:19]>> But Spider Noir shows us that this saga could have been a lot more. And I hope that in the future Marvel Studios is open to pitches that let their filmmakers get a little bit weird. But guys, let me know what you thought of Spider Noir down in the comments. And let me know other multiverse projects you'd like to see from Marvel. different settings, different genres. What would appeal to you? Let me know in the comments. Or you can find me on Twitter, Blue Sky Threads, or on our free to join Discord server, or subscribe to me on Substack. And if it's your first time here, please subscribe. Smash that bell for alerts. For Screen Crush, I'm Ryan Ery.