The noir version of Spider-Man was created for a 2009 Marvel comic book, and later appeared in the animated film “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” with Nicolas Cage voicing him.
When Marvel and Sony began hunting for Spider-Man TV properties, the producers behind the “Spider-Verse” films – Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and Amy Pascal – thought “Spider-Noir” deserved his own storyline.
“Shimmer Lake” director Oren Uziel says he was hired as the series showrunner because he not only loves the character, but is obsessed with noir, from Dashiel Hammett to James Ellroy. Uziel exercised his creative freedom to create a new take: The protagonist, once again played by Cage in his first TV starring role, is not Peter Parker, but a middle-aged P.I. named Ben Reilly.
Bam! Pow! Krakoom! The everlasting allure of the American comic book
At the start of the Depression-era series, Reilly, who considers James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart to be the epitome of cool, has retired the Spider identity after a tragic loss; he’s stumbling through life, barely able to pay the bills. But soon enough, he stumbles into a case that not only revives his interest in his investigative work but forces him to bust out the mask and the webs. (Brendan Gleeson co-stars as Silvermane, the city’s big, bad bully; the cast also includes Lamorne Morris, Karen Rodriguez, Li Jun Li and Jack Huston.)
In a twist, viewers can watch the episodes in either noirish black-and-white or bold comic book colors. Uziel spoke about the character, the color palettes and more.
The series premieres on Prime Video on May 27. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q. How much did you talk to Nicolas Cage beforehand and did you tailor the role to him at all?
He was on board fairly early. But it is a totally different version of the character he voiced in “The Spider-Verse.” It wasn’t going to be anything we’ve seen before. He’s not Peter Parker or a high school kid.
Once we talked about it and I knew that our sensibilities were so similar, I just wrote the character; it wasn’t really writing towards Nick. Then we came together and made it Nick’s and my version of the character.
My favorite part about working with Nick is realizing how encyclopedic his knowledge of cinema, and noir in particular, is. He’s so passionate about this stuff and he will push you outside of your comfort zone. He pushed me to be a little less conservative with the character, to be a little bolder, and I would reel him in sometimes to make sure that we were still grounded in the reality of our particular show.
Q. There’s a moment where he starts saying, “See,” like Edward G. Robinson. Was that on purpose? Whose idea was that?
Months before shooting, we were at the Smokehouse in Los Angeles having lunch, and Nick said, “I think I’m going to do Edward G. Robinson here,” and that scene actually pulled a bit from “L.A. Confidential,” so the cuts are more modern, but it worked.
There are other homages as the show develops. It’s explained even on a character level why, because his character has to learn how to be human again.
Q. At one point, he cites James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart as the epitome of cool, but this is years before Bogart was a big star. Were you able to do that because this is an alternate universe?
It is a different universe. I don’t want to be too jarring – he’s not going to reference something from the 90s – but since we’re in our own universe, there’s a little looseness with the timeline.
Q. How did you end up with the show in both color and black and white?
We were initially a black-and-white show. And then Amazon’s executives asked if we’d want to try this. It hasn’t been done before, and it was very exciting, but there was no one to warn me about how hard it was going to be, shooting something once, but having it look great in both black and white and color was a lot of work and put a lot of stress on all the department heads.
You couldn’t use red lipstick in black and white because it would look black. You’d have to find the happy medium even for the walls: Sometimes the walls were bright neon lime green, but they wouldn’t look like that on either camera. Trayce Gigi Field, who did the costumes, is an all-star and a maniac with her work ethic, dealing with this.
For the black and white, we knew what our references were – those old movies with the inventive use of lighting and deep shadows and German Expressionism. I talked with our cinematographers about unmotivated light and not worrying too much about verisimilitude and knowing where the source is, because those shadows are helping to tell the story and inform our characters and their predicaments.
But for the color, we had to invent it. We wanted to create a palette that was almost comic book – that would be really vibrant and the inverse of the other version.
I’m surprisingly attached to both versions. When I watch the black and white, it’s so gorgeous that I think, “I’m home again,” but then the colors are so vivid they knock your socks off.
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Q. Since you love noir, what films would you recommend to our readers?
Wow, I guess with great power comes great responsibility.
“Double Indemnity” is a great example. “Night of the Hunter” comes to mind a lot, and “The Third Man,” and “In A Lonely Place,” which is underrated. “Sunset Boulevard” is so important. I love noir, but I’m also pretty loose with my definition, so make sure you’ve seen “Casablanca.”
“The Maltese Falcon” is the more purist noir, but “Casablanca” is the better film. We pull a lot from “The Maltese Falcon,” down to Ben Reilly’s office. And what’s amazing is that we have Jack Huston in the show, and it was his grandfather, John, whose first movie as a director was “The Maltese Falcon.”