With great power comes great responsibility.
We learned this via countless “Spider-Man” movies but it also applies to “Spider-Noir,” the brand-new streaming series on Prime Video (all episodes are available now). The show is a loose spin-off of “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” following the exploits of Ben Reilly (Nicolas Cage), a Depression Era gumshoe in Manhattan who stumbles upon a much larger conspiracy. Reilly – or, as he is known to the good people of New York City, The Spider – is never faced with the existential quandary presented to Peter Parker by Uncle Ben.
But viewers of “Spider-Noir” are.
Because there are two separate ways to watch “Spider-Noir” – in “authentic black-and-white” and what the marketing materials are referring to as “True-Hue Full Color,” which looks to faithfully reproduce the super saturated Technicolor look of old Hollywood musicals. Both versions of “Spider-Noir” are available now.
According to the show’s creator Oren Uziel, doing a show in two completely different formats was a huge pain in the ass.
“There’s a reason this hasn’t been done before,” said Uziel. “It came across as an opportunity when we were talking to Amazon. It just felt like a great opportunity, considering we were mashing together these two genres of comic book and noir, and it’s like if you are a comic book person, you’re getting to watch the show in the black-and-white that you may have not seen before, in a style that might open you up to 100 movies you don’t know about. And vice versa. If you’re like, this show is not just for comic book people, so if you’re a fan of noir and Bogart, if you watch it in color, you’re watching it in a poppy, saturated, vibrant color palette that might open you up to a lot of the comic book stuff that you might have been ignoring, because there’s great art in both sides.”
Uziel said that the decision to shoot the show for both formats impacted everything – lighting, wardrobe, cinematography (“how you shoot everything in black-and-white is very specific”).
“Once we had to do it in both versions at the same time, it put enormous strain on the department heads, who were all like really rose to the challenge. When you pour a glass of whiskey in the show, it has to look a specific color or won’t look right in black and white, or it won’t look right in color,” said Uziel. “It was a lot of work in prep to get it dialed in, and then a lot of work in post in the color bay to dial in both the black-and-white look and the color look.”
Now, the question remains – which version should you watch?
According to Lamorne Morris, who plays Robbie Richardson, a freelance journalist and close ally of the Spider, the decision is clear.
“Well, here’s the thing… I feel my take is my take has always been you got to watch it the way society has always watched television. You started in black-and-white when TV was introduced, and then you introduce color, and it opens up a whole new appreciation for television,” said Morris. “Do this the same way. It’s a noir, so you want to watch it in black- and-white.”
Morris’ suggestion?
“I say, watch the whole thing in black-and-white, then go back and rewatch in color – you’re going to get an entirely different experience,” said Morris.
We asked Uziel what his response would be if somebody asked him which version they should watch.
“I want them to watch both. I default to black-and-white because it’s my comfort food for this, but every time I watch the color, I’m like, Oh man,” said Uziel. “When you watch it, you’ll see what I mean – it is so vibrant and so pushed. We worked really hard, where I would say, I’m just going to push this until it breaks, so just we’ll go until it breaks. Then we hit a certain point, we’re like, No, that is too much, too much.”
If you only have time for one version of the show – and, really, who can blame you? – we’d suggest the black-and-white version. It feels truer to the subject matter and time period of the show, you can almost feel the grime of the Depression underneath your fingernails, and there are so few things shot and distributed in black-and-white that the novelty also packs a punch.
But, hey, if you’ve got the time, why not both?
“Spider-Noir” is streaming on Prime Video now, in black-and-white and color.
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