Even tho the character of Spider-Man has been in alot of live action films he's really been in two live action TV shows both of which were in the seventies. Well now we have another new show to add to that list with this show actually doing two things different the first of which being the fact that you can watch the show in both color and black and white and the second of which being the fact that it is the live action Spider-Man project not to feature Peter Parker and so then join me as I give you my SPOILER FILLED review of the show that might be based watched in black and white with the show in question being called simply just "Spider-Noir" enjoy.
The plot of this show is five years after the death of his fiancée is killed at the hands of a criminal retired superhero and private investigator Ben Reilly finds himself dragged back into the hero game when he agrees to take on a case that involves a supposed cheating wife. Now then interms of what I personally thought / felt about the actual plot that's actually featured / presented to us in this very show well hen in all honesty I in all honesty personally thought / felt that the actual plot that's actually featured / presented to us in this very show was in all honesty really good. The shows plot was quite frankly alot more better then what it really had any right to be as by all rights this shows plot should have been a very generic and a very by the books superhero show with a noir twist put on it and that's really it and while there are hints of that being the case. The shows plot does add in enough things to keep you invested that when it does drop certain plot lines for reason you don't really feel it with the fact that it does drop certain plot lines being something that does hold the plot of the show as for no reason the show will start another plot and then drop it a few episodes later only to then pick it up again with this being something that does make it hard to tell just what the main plot of the show was meant to be when it would have been all the more better if the show just picked one plot line for it's main plot and just ran with it and not not just randomly start a new plot line every few episodes as that is something that will confuse the audience watching this show with the plot of this show also being really rather entertaining and as well as being really rather engaging as well in my freaking opinions anyways / at least.
Starring in this show is one of this shows executive producers Nicolas Cage as Ben Reilly / The Spider and Lamorne Morris as Joe "Robbie" Robertson. Also starring in this show show is Li Jun Li as Felicia "Cat" Hardy , Karen Rodriguez as Janet Ruiz , Abraham Popoola as Lonnie Lincoln / Tombstone , Jack Huston as Flint Marko / Sandman , Andrew Lewis Caldwell as Dirk Leyden / Megawatt , Amanda Schull as Ruby J. Williams , Lukas Haas as Winston , Cary Christopher as Frankie , Michael Kostroff as Alfred Morris and Brendan Gleeson as Finbar "Finn" Byrne / Silvermane.
Now then interms of what I personally thought / felt about the actual acting that's actually featured / presented to us in this very show well hen in all honesty I in all honesty personally thought / felt that the actual acting that's actually featured / presented to us in this very show was in all honesty really good. To be frank the fact that this shows acting was as good as it is is something that is still quite surprising as while yes the show does have some really good actors in it alot of this shows actors aren't that well known and yet they do turn in some really good performances in this show and while they don't out act the likes of Nicolas Cage or Brendan Gleeson for that matter they do tun in some really good performances in there own right. With the best actor in the whole entire show being Nicolas Cage as Ben Reilly / The Spider as he does carry the whole show with him giving us a really powerful performance as the character ss while the show does add in moments of humor with Ben Nicolas does pull them really well and when the show does have a dramatic moment he does really turn it up and while he doesn't have you in floods of tears during those moments you do feel the characters pain with both him and Brendan Gleeson clearly having a blast acting in scenes together and to be fair watching the two of them do a scene together is alot of fun to watch as we are watching two really good actor just knock it out of the park with there acting with Nicolas not really being afraid to go to those more wacky places with his character with this being something that does shine through in his final performance. With the acting that's in this very show really being helped by the fact that this shows scripts are all just so good that all this shows actors have to do is just say the lines as they are written and a good performance will come out of them naturally which is something that really does help to raise the overall quality of the acting that's in this very show.
Doing the CGI for this show is Alchemy 24 and the legends and the greats that are currently over at Industrial Light & Magic. Now then interms of what I personally thought / felt about the actual CGI that's actually featured / presented to us in this very show well hen in all honesty I in all honesty personally thought / felt that the actual CGI that's actually featured / presented to us in this very show was in all honesty really good. The thing that does make this shows CGI be so good in the first place is the fact that it does blend it really well with the show with the shows live action elements with the show really only using CGI in scenes where it would be impossible to do them for real. Like for example extending the shows sets to make them look bigger or by having The Spider swinging threw New York all of these things are things that would have been hard to do for real and therefor the only way to do them would be to do them in CGI. This isn't to say that the shows CGI is great all of the time tho as there are scene in the show where the CGI does look a little bit two much like a cartoon like whenever Megawatt uses his powers as while alot of the time the effects on them do look good there are times where it does look a little bit two fake with the thing even being true for the scenes where we can see Ben in the passenger seat of a car with the car moving as the projection for alot of those scenes does look a little bit of and while it is clear that the makers of this show wouldn't give the effects team alot of time to finish those scenes as alot of them are nothing scenes it does lower the overall quality of the shows effects. With things like Megawatts powers being something that should have had more time given to them given the fact that he is a minor character in the show however when the show does have some good effects like Ben swinging threw New York it is something that does look really good with it being something that does show that the makers of this show did know when to use CGI and when to do things for real.
SPOILERS START HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Like with alot of noir films and TV shows this one does have a femme fatal character which in this case is Cat herself. With the character being someone who is madly in love with Flint Marko so much so that she'll do anything to see him cured of his powers and yet the second that she believes him dead she gets Ben to fall in love with her this is something that is an interesting part of the show due to the fact that she and Ben were planning on running away together and yet because of the fact that she loves Flint alot more then she does Ben she turns him into a doctor that wants to use him for own ends thus leaving Ben broken hearted. The theme of love and what it can do to you is something that we see all throughout the show as we get told by Ben himself that the biggest mistake he made prior to episode 1 was falling in love with him struggling to cope with the death of Ruby so much so that he gave up being The Spider as he believed that her death was his fault and yet when we see him fall in love again this time with Cat he is not only all the more wiser but is also willing to take a chance which does make it all the more upsetting when she does betray him. When it comes to Cat it's clear that she is the type of character that has never not had a boyfriend and therefore sh does struggle with knowing what to do when she believes that she doesn't have one anymore and even tho Flint has barely been missing for a few days by the time she starts to flirt with Ben the two of them do still form this connection with each other where they are both able to tell the other things that they might not have done otherwise. The show does go to great length to show us both the up and the down sides of being madly in love with with someone as the show do0es show us Ben being really happy when he thinks that he's found true love with Cat and yet the second that she turns on him he realises that she's played him like a fiddle and the first thing that he does is get drunk and be the same depressed person that he was at the start of the show.
In what is a rather cool move there are actually two ways that you can watch this show the first of which is in color and the second is in black and white. Watching the show in color is alot more easier for more modern audiences to do as it is something that they are more used to do however given the fact that this is noir show and alot of those classic noir films were all done in black and white this is show does seem like it would be a much more better watch in that format as it would be more true to the classic noir genre as then you could have all of these harsh shadows hitting the characters and you could have characters walking out of the shadows alot more often and this is something that you just can't do in color. Due to the fact that we can see everything clear as day and while the characters do still have those harsh shadows hitting them alot of the time it feels like it's lacking something when its done in color but on the plus side tho it is understandable why the makers of this show did give us the audience a choice between the two formats as there will be people who will find watching the show in color alot more easier then watching it in black and white just due to the fact that they are more used to watching films and TV shows in that way and that's fair enough, much like there will be people who will want to watch this show in black and white as they'll want to get the proper noir expirence and that is something that you can't fully replicate when watching the show in color as alot of the noir films were never made to be seen in color even the word noir means black in French but the fact that they went out of there way to produce to different versions of an episode is something is to be commended as its something that alot of studios just won't do and will instead jus force us to watch the one version of something even tho watching it a different way might be the better option.
Silvermane might be the best villain that the makers of this show could have used for this season of the show. As the character isn't that well known and therefor they do have alot more room to do whatever they want with his character and to be fair he does seem like the type of character that you would want to meet in like the first film of a new series as while he yes he is threatening and he is cunning he's also someone that our hero could very easily beat in a fight if he wanted to do with it being made clear that this take on the character was done as a way for Sony to say that they had there own version of The Penguin as the two characters are very similar to each other with them even both being played by an Irish person. Yet Silvermane doesn't really have an endgame as he spends a good portion of the first half of the season trying to work out who burnt down his house and tried to kill him and spending a few episodes of the rest of the season trying and failing to get an army of superpowered people to help him take over New York this is something that does make it hard to get a good read on who he is as a character as his motivations seem to be shifting from episode to episode when giving him one clear goal in mind be it to built up his superpowered army or to find out who tried to kill him would have been more then enough to make him a truly threatening character and heck out of the two motivations its him trying to work who killed him that brings out his more evil side as there we do get to see him kill people in cold blood. This is something that we don't get to see with the rest of his evil plan and it is something that could have made his character be all the more unlikable as he does spend alot of time talking to the mayor of New York saying things like how he could have him replaced and yet when push does do come to shove we don't see him kill him and heck its not even Ben that kills him its Cat which yes does make sense for her character but for the main villain you do want him to get killed off by the main hero of the show.
Now then this show has / had an exact grand total running time of no longer then forty nine minuets with episode six having the shortest running time of forty six minuets and thirty five seconds and episode episode five having the longest running time of forty nine minuets and twenty five seconds. These are pretty solid running times for this show to have but what does let the show done is the fact that there are two few episodes in this first season as you very easily could have gotten a good ten episodes out of this first season alone which would have the advantage of letting the plot of the show breathe a little bit more and it would allow for the show to pick just the one main plot line and not just pick up and drop it's main plot line whenever it chooses to do so with the show having more then enough there interms of plot to really cover that amount of plot in the first place. Yet even with the show having eight episodes it still doesn't use its running time all that wisely as the show doesn't take the time to fully develop its plot with the show being alot more focused on giving different plot lines then it i in giving us a more focused and well developed plot something which it would have been alot more able to do if the season was just a few episodes longer as then the show would have that time to explore these multiple plots whilst having the one overarching plot line. This is something that does effect the shows character development as well as understandably the only character that does get some sort of character development inn Ben as he does go from someone who is running away from his past to someone who does fully embrace it by becoming The Spider once again and while it is understandable why he does get alot of the shows character development as he is the shows main character we don't see characters like Cat , Janet or Robbie get any kind of character development with us knowing just as much about them coming out of the show then we did coming into the show but I really will admit that this show really does have some really good pacing to it tho.
So now then as this is an action show that really does mean that I have to actually talk about the actual action that's actually featured / presented to us in this very show well then in all honesty I in all honesty personally thought / felt that the actual action that's actually featured / presented to us in this very show was in all honesty pretty good. The fact that this show does have alot of good action in it isn't something that's all that surprising due to the fact that the makers of this show also made the highly entertaining Spider-Verse films and therefor they do know how to craft some really good action something which does come into use alot of the time in this show with us getting at the very least one action scene per-episode in this show. With the best action scene in the whole entire show being the fight scene in episode seven "Nobody's Hero" as we do get this really cool bar room fight scene where a drunk Ben dressed in his The Spider mask decides to take on a bunch of people that where making fun of him for not being as good they remember him being with the whole fight scene being done in one continuous shot which is always something that will be really impressive to see as if one person mistimes something that they have to start the whole thing over again from scratch and yet it is something that they do pull off really well in this episode with the scene itself having moments of comedy with the people getting moaning in pain alot of the time with it being that great mixture of comedy and action being something that two of the shows other executive producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller do really well and it is something that is used to great effect in this scene with the scene itself being just as hard hitting as it is funny to watch with the rest of the shows action being just as good as well in my freaking opinions anyways / at least.
SPOILERS END HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Overall we are starting the summer months of good with this show and here's hoping that we really can end next month just as good as we've ended this month. As Spider-Man: Brand New Day does have alot to live up to now as this show has proven that you don't need Peter Parker playing Spider-Man for it to be good as all you need is a good script and good acting and both of those are things that this show really has in spades in my freaking opinions anyways / at least. Now then i've talked about all of the good and as well as all of the bad things that are in this very show in this very review and as such that really does mean that this very show really does earn itself a grand old score of exactly a 7.5 out of 10 from me.
Now then as for where I personally got all of the images that I personally used in this very review well then boys and girls and as well as ladies and gentlemen I personally got all of the images that I personally used in this very review from IMP Awards . Com and Google Images. With my personally preferred website to use to get the images from this very show that I used in this very post being the really great Google Images really simply just due to the fact that really alot of if not really all of the images that are all really from this very show with alot of them really being really better quality then what you'd really think of and all of the images are really of course up and really on Google Images really are also really all fairly high in quality and as well as them all being really fairly freaking high in definition.