Nicolas Cage was born to play 1930s PI Ben Reilly/The Spider: part Bogey, part Bugs Bunny, 100% Cage-y.
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Review: Spider-Noir recaptures the magic of a bygone era
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I'm half way through it, been watching in color.
I'm enjoying it. It's very much scenery chewing, you've got to be into the genre and a bit of pastiche, but I think they got the right cast to pull it off.
I'm so with Jen's last point about it not interconnecting. I remember how it felt exciting when the MCU was going to be an actual universe, and all the connections. Now instead of exciting it feels like a slog, and I've tuned out of a lot of it.
The way to catch my interest at this point is to tell a self contained story that doesn't have all the baggage and yokes.
I'm enjoying it. It's very much scenery chewing, you've got to be into the genre and a bit of pastiche, but I think they got the right cast to pull it off.
I'm so with Jen's last point about it not interconnecting. I remember how it felt exciting when the MCU was going to be an actual universe, and all the connections. Now instead of exciting it feels like a slog, and I've tuned out of a lot of it.
The way to catch my interest at this point is to tell a self contained story that doesn't have all the baggage and yokes.
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I'll likely get a ton of hate for this, but I found the show rather mediocre. You can't wow me with black-and-white visuals, so what was left? A predictable, cheesy story, lame characters and in general a show that tried to be serious but felt at times more like bad comedy.
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I've been enjoying it, but it does sound at times like Cage is taking with marbles in the his mouth. Which I find a bit distracting.
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This problem is what made me stop reading Marvel and DC comics to almost entirely focus on creator owned stories. It might be fun to check in on what Spiderman is up to, then every like 11 months their stories get crossovers with a bunch of other BS I don't care about and I end up spending too much time wiki diving to figure out what the heck is going on.
One of the reasons I've been recommending Invincible since it was still in publication was that, aside from short unimportant cameos by other Image characters, it was a superhero comic where you didn't need to know anyone who was not already introduced in the book you were reading.
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I don't think you should get hate for that, it's a genre piece that I think it meant to be a little comedic. It's somewhere between a love letter to the genre and sending it up. I think you gotta view it all with a broad wink.
And that's not going to appeal to everyone, and I don't think that's a bad thing.
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YES!
Too bad I can only upvote once. This like every time another POS MCU/DCU offering drops. I don't want a universe. I want a good story. Especially these days when the world seems like it's ending, those kinds of universe-shaking stories might be compelling screen viewing to some, but to me it's an entirely different vibe when you're IRL'ing that plot.
But for me, I'm going to go with the black and white. It adds a layer of unreality, and takes me back to George Reeve's Superman, for a brain-off-the-hook joyride you KNOW isn't going to happen in real life. And Cage has GOT to be the one to nail the 1930's down-on-his-luck detective sensibility with the kind of escapism, wit and pathos the old-time comics of the 30's used to have.
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Yes, this, so much this. When you need to go online to find a reading order for 12 different titles just to keep up with the events in the one comic you care about it feels bad, and like the gimmick it is to sell more issues.
The last time I was seriously invested in comics was when Vertigo was still around. You could read Fables or 100 Bullets or Hellblazer and just enjoy it for what it was, without having to worry about 20 other writers and their ideas all trying to be crammed into the same sack.
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Marvel and DC are so bad for reading order BS. It's almost never "Start with Heroman #1 and go". It's usually "Read Double Sized Annual Special 202X, then Heroman #1-9, then read Crossover Event #1-3, then back to Heroman #10-16..." It would not be so bad if those specials didn't have crucial info in them where you might be lost if you skip them, but...
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That was a part of his backstory. I won't reveal spoilers as to why.
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You mean that he's plastered drunk the entire time?
I finished it last night, really loved it. Aside from a strange detour into body horror territory that padded a bunch of time but didn't add much, it was all very compelling. Cage and Gleeson had delightful chemistry, Morris was perfectly cast.
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Did they specifically design lighting and shadows on the set for black and white? Old film directors took that into account when shooting without color.
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No, not due to him being plastered! But I can't fault him for turning to booze to cope with his situation (which in some ways was also caused by him turning to booze)You mean that he's plastered drunk the entire time?
I finished it last night, really loved it. Aside from a strange detour into body horror territory that padded a bunch of time but didn't add much, it was all very compelling. Cage and Gleeson had delightful chemistry, Morris was perfectly cast.
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From Wikipedia:
The series was created for release in both black-and-white and color. To achieve the two versions, on-set footage was captured digitally to then be split and processed separately. The team coined the term "True-Hue" to refer to how they went about creating their Technicolor-like color version, with Cage saying that version was made to look "super saturated" and Uziel noting it was as if the black and white film had been colorized.[4] Cage likened the style of the color version to the painting Nighthawks (1942) by Edward Hopper.[6] Anthony Breznican at Esquire felt each version resulted in different vibes for the series, "with the color version veering more toward the lighthearted comic-strip crime capers of Dick Tracy, while the black and white conjures the sinister moral abyss of the novels of Raymond Chandler".[4]
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I enjoyed it from start to finish. I watched in B&W and will probably re-watch it in color. The color version really pops. I watched a bit of it in color to see if the rating was different between the two. I think it's a bit violent for TV-14 but I was thinking the red blood would tick it up a notch for the color version.
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Gee, how do you expect a homage to Film Noir to play out if it wasn't ham packed?
Maybe Cage is the consummate actor because he did play the trope of the down-on-his-luck, living-in-a-bottle, private-detective-with-a-hidden-past to perfection?
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Sorry if this is covered in the spoilered section but who (usually) portrays The Spider? Nicolas Cage? Brendan Wayne?
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They did… at first…
View: https://www.threads.com/@kclauf/post/DY-NTS6CWc3
The referenced color shooting above is actually a reshoot in color that was then digitally processed into noir and true hue.
It’s a shame since it would have been cool to see a truly noir style shoot in this day and age.
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There's a Kurt Busiek quote I think of often: "The stories are the cake, and the shared-universe stuff is frosting. Things tend to go horribly wrong when people start to think the frosting is more important than the cake, and then get better when they remember that it’s about the cake after all."
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It's an entertaining series. The costumes are amazing. I thought Nick Cage was great, sometimes he dials it in, but when he cares he's good. But yes, he really leans into that craaazzzy jerky thing he does. All the main characters are interesting.
Lots of smoking. Period accurate, but perhaps something for parents to consider.
Lots of smoking. Period accurate, but perhaps something for parents to consider.
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No? Not Orson Welles or Howard Hawks or John Huston or James Whale? Not German expressionism or the photography of Ansel Adams or the house falling down around Buster Keaton? Not Fleischer Brothers Popeye or Mouse: PI for Hire? Yes to the animated version of Akira but no to the manga?
Well shit, man, completely leaving aside the merits of Spider-Noir it sounds like you're unmoved by a lot of genuine visual grandeur.
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I'd say as far as what I'm concerned about my kid seeing I'm probably less worried about smoking than a guy getting tortured to death in the first episode, but yeah I suppose the smoking is more imitable.
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I do get that, but sometimes you get a cake that's all frosting and it's inedible.
I don't mind the shared universe stuff in general and sometimes it's harmless. But it's undeniable that the big 2 are actively trying to use crossovers to sell more books and it's not uncommon to ruin the flow of an ongoing story-line because the big yearly event has to happen.
I do appreciate a fun gag like Green Arrow going a whole adventure without asking for help from his superhero friends, only to get stranded on a raft at sea and begrudgingly scream "Clark!!!" out loud so Superman can give them a lift home at the end.
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To be honest with you, I don't think parents should watch this show
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I stopped watching anything on Amazon when they started adding ads to free content for Prime members. Not sure when that was but probably my ad blockers worked at the time. YouTube also became unusable a while ago on Safari and then I became aware that uBlock Origin worked on worked on FireFox and made YouTube good again. And discovered it also worked on their "free" movies with ads and Tubi. Apple (Safari) and Google (Chrome) have added technology to block the ad blockers. Old news to many of you I'm sure, but I just tried it on Amazon today for the first time attempt to watch a show since I gave it up a year ago. Works fine!
Spider-Noir you ask? OK, watched it for ten minutes, seems good enough to watch the rest of the series.
Spider-Noir you ask? OK, watched it for ten minutes, seems good enough to watch the rest of the series.
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Hey Sony did you guys forget this was supposed to be a thing??? We're all still waiting damnit!
As to Spider-Noir itself, loved it though Cage's Cage-isms were grating on me a bit in episodes 6+7. Even with a perfectly acceptable in universe explanation it just felt a bit much. Depression era PI stories are my jam and this hit just perfect. Is totally watch another season of this but if it's a one off I'll be perfectly happy with it too.
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I’m not an expert by any stretch and maybe my expectations are wrong, but I’ll say I’m a little disappointed that the cinematography seems too modern to me for the Noir vibe. We get quick flipping shot/reverse-shot dialog and fast moving camera takes from drones (or CGI’s magical cameras). I expected to see more face-to-face “two-shot” dialog and fixed cameras. Something closer to Reeves’ 1950’s Superman? This is a modern series, through and through.
Maybe that’s just what modern audiences want in a
Maybe that’s just what modern audiences want in a
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Days ago, I caught a glimpse of the hit film Jurassic Park (which I haven't viewed in its entirety yet because I've been busy) and commented that the cinematography was completely different to that of modern films.
I wonder if the Spider-Noir quick cuts are what the director wanted or are to cater to current audiences' attention spans.
Attention spans.
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Watched the first episode in B&W. Was hoping they would do something similar to Sin City where there's the occasional accent of colour (like the flames, or electricity, or things like that). But it was just grayscale. There were certain scenes that were hard to watch as there wasn't much contrast between items.
Watched the rest of the season in colour. Enjoyed it overall. Cage can still play loony characters with quite a bit more physicality than I was expecting for someone in their 60s.
I won't be upset if this is a one-and-done series. But won't mind, either, if it has a second, third, or fourth season. Would've preferred an animated series to go along with the Spiderverse pastiche, but this was a fun show to watch.
Watched the rest of the season in colour. Enjoyed it overall. Cage can still play loony characters with quite a bit more physicality than I was expecting for someone in their 60s.
I won't be upset if this is a one-and-done series. But won't mind, either, if it has a second, third, or fourth season. Would've preferred an animated series to go along with the Spiderverse pastiche, but this was a fun show to watch.
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