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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
It's June and another big week in the run-up to the midterms. Primaries in half a dozen states, including California, where new congressional maps are in place and a chaotic race for governor is wide open. We're also following gas prices and Iran. So far, talk of a peace deal is just talk. We'll keep you posted. Listen every morning, up first on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
One of the best bits in the animated movie Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse was the taste we got of a black-and-white 1930s film noir Spider-Man who talked in Dashiell Hammett dialogue and sounded like Nicolas Cage because he was voiced by Nicolas Cage.
Well, if you like that taste, Prime Video is serving you up an all-you-can-eat buffet with Spider Noir, a new live-action series starring Nicolas Cage. But does the show get its blend of noir and superheroes right? I'm Glenn Weldon. Today we're talking about Spider Noir on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.
A grassy green lawn might look nice, but it's going to eat up resources, like drinking water and the gas you put in the mower. You can do a solid for the environment by ditching even just some of your lawn and replacing it with a wildlife-friendly garden. LifeKit has tips to get you started. No green thumb required. Listen to the LifeKit podcast in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Joining me today is filmmaker, pop culture critic, and iHeartRadio producer, Joelle Monique. Welcome back, Joelle.
Thanks, Glenn. Glad to be here.
Great to have you. Also with us is Daisy Rosario. She's the senior supervising producer of audio at Slate, where she works with shows like Death, Sex, and Money, and I See Why Am I, which I keep trying to call Icky Me, but it's not really catching on. Hey, Daisy.
Hey, I'm good. Happy to be here. Thanks.
Great to have you.
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Chapter 2: What is the premise of the Spider-Noir series?
In Spider Noir, Nick Cage is Ben Reilly, a down-on-his-luck private dick who used to be New York's only superhero, the Spider. But following a tragedy, he's hung up his mask.
Ruby once told me that with great power comes great responsibility. Well, she was the greatest responsibility I ever had. And I failed her. The Spider failed her.
That is, until a case involving a lot of noir-inflected analogs of classic Spider-Man characters, Black Cat, Sandman, Tombstone, and more, drags him back into the game. Brendan Gleeson turns up as a mob boss, and Lamorne Morris plays this universe's version of Spidey's reporter pal, Robby.
The press materials say that this is not a spinoff of the Spider-Verse movies, and it's set in its own separate universe, but come on. In an unusual move, the series' eight episodes are presented in two formats, color and black and white. Trust us, go with black and white. Spider Noir is streaming now on Prime Video.
We should mention Amazon supports NPR and pays to distribute some of our content. Joelle, we're going to start with you. Is this the stuff dreams are made of?
Oh, maybe not dreams, but definitely not nightmares either. I think there's a lot of fun stuff to enjoy. Nicolas Cage, Nicolas Caging, all over this joint. He is over the top. It's why he's a star. He's... goofy, but somehow still affectionate and resonant. But I think overall, I had a really difficult time with the tone of the show. I love a good noir.
To me, noir is all about secrets and trying to understand the human condition. And then usually there's a very intense crime involved. I felt the crime was kind of all over the place and didn't quite build in a way that was satisfactory. And I felt there was a lot of struggle to get the blend of like, when is it okay to be funny? And when is it okay to be like deep and darkly dramatic?
And it kind of trying to do both washed it out. I will say what I appreciated about the series is a lot of times, particularly when we're doing comic books within other genres, um, We want to make everything very sanitized. In other words, we do blind race casting and we're not going to address the struggles of the time period or that becomes the whole thing.
It's just about the struggles of the time period, which becomes laborious. I felt that this found a really good balance between like, okay, there was some segregation. Okay. Not everyone would have respected everyone in their position because of the color of their skin. Right. But this is nobody's like sob story. And I was pleasantly surprised by that. So there's,
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Chapter 3: How does Nicolas Cage portray his character in Spider-Noir?
I come down between you two, but man, after that first episode, I was totally team Daisy. Ultimately, I do think this missed the mark. I just don't think it goes hard enough because it's adopting noir as a style, as an affect, and that's not what noir is. Noir is a
conceptual basis it's like it can't be slathered over the top it has to be baked in it has to saturate every aspect of what's on screen or it just comes off as a goof and I think it comes off as kind of a goof here pastiche but I will say that was me after the first episode I groused to producer Mike about how the show was such a misfire and he asked me just in passing how I watched it and I said well I just clicked on the first screener I got that was the color one he said watch it in black and white
And I watched the second episode and the rest of the episodes, black and white, and that effect was greatly lessened because, boy, I didn't think the color worked at all. But it's still there. Even in black and white, there is a feeling of just we're all saying the same thing, not wanting to commit to the bit or to wink at the bit. The mission statement is off.
I felt like he was checking off those noir elements suitably like they were stations of the cross instead of black. reveling in them. I don't know if these people love noir. I think they love extending a superhero IP. I don't think they love noir.
Even when we're looking at the shots, some of these shots are composed so beautifully, but then you'll go 15 minutes without a beautifully composed shot, and you're like, we were just at the table with the mirror effect, and it was so gorgeous. Where did that go? It just comes and goes so randomly, too. I wish that there had been some kind of stake straight through where it was like,
Everyone is serious, but Nick Cage is the clown in this space. I thought that might have worked. Or if we had more of a Pleasantville effect where, you know, I know they're trying to separate it from the movie. I'm not quite sure why that was the decision that ended up being made. But like in the movie, his character finds a Rubik's Cube and he's perplexed and like he's like astounded by it.
And I thought, oh, perhaps we'll bring this idea of moving from black and white to color and kind of explore that. But that's not really the thing either. I guess I was just confused as to like what they enjoyed about this character. Was it just Nick Cage's goofy voice, which again, very entertaining. Enjoy watching him on screen. But not really enough to carry like a full series.
I didn't really understand like what the end goal was. As somebody who really loves Spider-Man, as somebody who's like a fan of Nicolas Cage and noir, you know, to your point, Daisy, I was just like, all of the elements are here. And, you know, if we can mention like Li Zhengli is so fun. I just really love her as an actress. And I thought like, oh, that's a really great casting.
Like, that's really fun. I thought Lamorne, you know, when he was allowed to be...
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Chapter 4: What are the strengths and weaknesses of the show's tone?
And I think it's just because of the character, really. Brendan's doing a great job, but as Stacey was saying, everyone's doing a great job. But that character feels the most grounded in a noir world. universe. He's an older guy who's losing his perceived control. He's still the ruler, but he's like, are people questioning me? Are they not showing up?
Like, am I being put out to pasture before I'm ready? No, I'm still the boss. That's really interesting. Brendan Gleeson's character, Silvermane, has this relationship with Cat Hardy. She's like a lounge singer who's kind of almost like a doll for him. Yeah. he just like amasses this control over her life.
It's strictly about you wear these clothes, you perform in my club, that kind of situation, which I found really compelling for her. Like for the women in this series, you know, they get really interesting starting points, but I feel like where they go, they don't, they can kind of just stay in the same place. To me, here's the biggest sin of the show.
Noir, at a time when, you know, women were going through a lot, we'll say, had really interesting, vibrant female characters all through the canon. Like, really great upfront, incredible, like, biting dialogue, difficult situations they had to maneuver. And I just felt like... Our female characters were kind of stuck.
They were given some interesting starting places and then nowhere to go with that. And all of their challenges felt superficial. There's a human element of fear that is essential to noir. Of like, I don't know what's going to happen. I'm scared for my life. I'm scared for my compatriots. I'm scared. I'm scared for my country.
Like you need that level of fear running throughout and it's got to be clear for every character. You're just missing the fear. And so all of that like suspense and grittiness and build that you love when you're watching a noir is just gone. It's difficult. I, again, had fun moments watching it. There are certain scenes that work.
There's some good fight stuff that happens where I was like, oh, that's kind of impressive. I thought, oh my gosh, the spider noir costume is great.
brand it's good so good and we know we've seen some bad costumes yeah in our time watching the superhero stuff so i was like pleasantly impressed i feel like people came i just wish ah man i really wish we had tightened up on like the noir centric element and maybe that's our fault maybe as noir lovers and filmmakers we shouldn't have been anticipating that from like a spider-man thing but i think coming off of the spider-verse movies and the quality that was there
I think we're all kind of hoping for that same kind of emotional resonance here.
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Chapter 5: How does the show balance humor and drama in noir storytelling?
I mean, I just didn't feel the stakes. You know, I think even before I started trying to look at it more through a noir lens, I just didn't really feel the stakes like the way that's something that I'm compelled by. Right. Like pulls my attention and I care even if I don't completely understand yet why I care. Right.
There were some things that happened in later episodes that I did find interesting. But even then I felt very aware of like, okay, but like I wouldn't have made it to this point. And there's just too many things vying for our attention.
Yeah. We're all saying in slightly different ways. We're all saying the superficiality of its approach, its take is what's kind of bouncing off of. I also have a longstanding grudge against superhero stories without superheroes. You know, your Gothams, your Smallvilles, your Pennyworths. And this thing, its whole thing is he's hung up the webs.
He hung up the mask because of tragedy, which is a very cliche thing. But in fairness, it's a very Spider-Man cliche. He's the guy who's always hanging up the suit. So I'm going to give her props. And I'm about to make a very petty point, but I think it speaks to what we're all kind of talking about. It's kind of grab bag noir pastiche thing, right? Lucas Haas plays like an assistant.
Lucas Haas, this is a period piece. Either wear a wig or cut your damn hair. You can't have that shag in 1930s. But, you know, you can say, well, this is an alternate universe. That might explain why there is a 1958 Perry Como version of Accentuate the Positive as a needle drop in episode two, even though this is supposed to be set in the 30s.
And in episode three, Ben quotes Betty Davis saying, what a dump, which is from a 1949 movie, Beyond the Forest. So, yes, given that, why wouldn't a character in the 30s have this fallout boy haircut? You know, sure. Why not? Nothing matters. No stakes.
I did find the time period a little confusing. We talked a little bit about it off mic. Well, the costumes are screaming like World War One and it's clearly the 30s. There's so much they're like, oh, you can't quite tell if the depression has just hit or are we facing like the tail end of it? And also, I just really don't appreciate things that are too clean in cinema.
And I feel like if we're in the middle of a depression, everybody needs to be much more scraggly. It needs to be much harder times. We get a lot of mentions of, oh, we have no money, but then no competition.
consequences of not having the money somehow it's always magically there when we need it which i find as a formerly extremely poor person very difficult to follow i'm like what's not how people with zero funds operate i think that level of realism would have helped us you know because when you look at like the canon noir you don't get a lot of like mysticism or science fiction and
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Chapter 6: What are the visual elements that stand out in Spider-Noir?
Why don't I have six more scenes with them?
Anyway.
much more time with these people. How did you fall in love? What is your relationship like? What is hiding it like? How does it, the push and pull of each other, like you get so little of it that it's, oh my gosh, I was dying. I was like, please, please, I love the love in a noir. It's always so sticky and difficult.
It is a lot of telling and not so much showing.
Even in the Hoovervilles, to your point, Joelle, even in the Hoovervilles, people have kind of smudges on their faces like a high school production of Les Mis, and that's kind of where it kind of cuts off. I don't know. So, you know, you heard us talk about this, folks. We're not sold on it. You might be. It's very pretty to look at. That brings us to the end of our show.
Joelle Monique, Daisy Rosario, thank you so much for being here. We'll have a better thing next time.
Thanks, Glenn.
This episode was produced by Hafsa Fathom and Mike Cassivan, edited by our showrunner Jessica Reedy, and Hello Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon, and we'll see you all next time.
Richard Reeves is unimpressed by online influencers who peddle ideas about hyper-masculinity. You're talking about boys and men. Where's your policy agenda? You're good on podcasts, but we've actually done a bunch of stuff for boys and men. Sorry, what have you done? Ideas about the next era of manhood. That's on the TED Radio Hour podcast. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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