Spider-Noir tries to sit on two chairs — noir and superheroics — but falls between them. But Nicolas Cage carries the whole show alone. Read our review in the style of a tabloid note on Spider-Noir (2026)

HOLLYWOOD SCAMMERS HAVE VIOLATED THE IMAGE OF SPIDER-MAN!

Gentlemen readers! Citizens who have not yet lost the ability to blush! Your humble servant, who survived Ben Affleck's Daredevil, the writers' strike, and Sarick Andreasyan's superheroics, is sure: nothing can surprise him anymore. However, on May 27, some businessmen from the Pacific coast released a spectacle under the loud name Spider-Noir — and your Roman Kovalev, after watching, sat on the couch with his mouth open, like a gudgeon on the counter of a local fish shop.

SCANDALOUS DETAILS: HOW THE PUBLIC WAS SOLD A PIG IN A POKE

If you believe the announcement — and as it turned out, you shouldn't — we were promised a story about an aged and battered Spider named Ben Reilly: a private detective, war veteran, retired hero, whom life once forced to put on the mask again. New York in the thirties, the Great Depression, cigarette smoke, gangsters, and femme fatales. Sounds like the best Dashiell Hammett novel, right?

Right — on paper. On screen, however, a completely different beast awaited us.

Let's start with the fact that the directors, apparently, spent the entire budget on paying Nicolas Cage — and rightly so, for this is the only reasonable investment in the entire enterprise. The sets of Spider-Noir strongly suggest that 1930s New York was built right in a theater barn somewhere on the outskirts of Los Angeles, and from papier-mâché and other makeshift materials. The streets look as if the painters didn't have time to finish the work by the shooting day and simply pulled a darker canvas over them. The cinematic look of the series — whether you choose the color or black-and-white version, it's all the same — breathes economy, like the dampness in the basement of a high-rise on Vasilyevsky Island.

But that, gentlemen, is just the beginning.

The authors of this work, apparently, had no idea who they were even trying to please. Connoisseurs of true noir — those who know the difference between Hammett and Chandler and keep worn-out volumes close to their hearts — will get a simplistic genre craft with stupid jokes that would be more appropriate at a Sunday matinee for preschoolers (if this is an attempt by the authors to be ironic, it's even worse). Fans of superheroics, craving webs, acrobatics, and at least some comic-book scale, will find that Spider here puts on the mask so rarely and so reluctantly that you begin to suspect the props were issued on receipt and only for certain hours. The action is as dreary as a rainy Monday in St. Petersburg, and just as inevitable.

The acting of the supporting cast does not improve the picture. The gentlemen and ladies filling the screen besides Cage exist with about the same degree of credibility as the sets, which I have already had the honor to comment on. The mobster Silvermane, played by Brendan Gleeson, is perhaps an exception: old Gleeson can be scary even when he has nothing to play. And here he has nothing to play. The other characters fulfilled their contracts to quickly move on to other projects.

SENSATION! THE ONLY RIGHTEOUS MAN IN SODOM — HIS NAME IS NICOLAS CAGE!

And here, dear readers, your Roman Kovalev must lay down his pen and take off his hat for a moment.

Because Nicolas Cage is a phenomenon before which all complaints about the direction, sets, and script pale. This man plays the weary detective as if he lived his life personally: with all its debts, losses, and liters of bad whiskey. Cage carries this series on his shoulders as tirelessly as a draft horse pulled a cart with a piano up Broadway during rush hour in the mid-30s — and with about the same degree of dignity.

They say he described his character as a mix of Bogart, Cagney, and Edward Robinson. To your reviewer, this resembles a recipe for a strong cocktail that warms on this dreary, wind-swept St. Petersburg June evening.

THE VERDICT IS OBVIOUS

Spider-Noir is a series that wanted to be everything at once: noir for adults, a comic book for the young, a comedy for everyone else — but became nothing for everyone. The production is meager, the audience undefined, superheroics absent as a phenomenon, noir diluted with jokes at the level of a children's skit. If not for Nicolas Cage, who, apparently, was the only one on that set who knew what he was doing and why, we would be dealing with pure crime.

Is it worth watching? If you are a fan of the actor, watch it for him alone. If not, spend your time on something more sensible. For example, reading or watching The Maltese Falcon. At least there the sets aren't made from what was lying around the studio.