Nineteen years and three Venom movies later, Sam Raimi’s bungling of Spider-Man’s black suit in Spider-Man 3 still stings. The whole point of the story of Spidey’s symbiote suit is that, along with enhancing his powers, the suit gives Spider-Man/Peter Parker a darker edge that takes over his judgement and personality. Yet, in Spider-Man 3, we got an emo-looking Spider-Man who, for some reason, really likes to dance.
I’m still waiting for a proper black suit Spider-Man story, but in the meantime, Prime Video’s new series Spider-Noir gives us a black-suited Spider-Man variant with some definite edge, including one scene that I’m quite certain no mainstream Spider-Man movie would ever dare to include.
Spider-Noir takes place in the 1930s and follows the vigilante “The Spider” (Nicolas Cage), as he investigates the crime empire of Silvermane (Brendan Gleeson). When he’s not web-slinging around depression-era New York City, The Spider, by day, is private investigator Ben Reilly, who’s still grieving the loss of his deceased girlfriend and who uses alcohol to numb the pain.
By episode 7 of the eight-episode first season, things don’t seem to be going Ben Reilly’s way. After coming out of retirement as The Spider after a five-year absence, Reilly was kidnapped by a mad scientist with the aid of Cat Hardy (Li Jun Li), a woman who he thought had feelings for him. All of which gives Reilly more reason to drink, so begins a scene where he’s drowning his sorrows in a near-empty saloon where he’s drunkenly talking to the uninterested bartender about the anatomy of spiders.
Image: Prime
A little while later, five loudmouths enter the bar, bragging about getting some money that was thrown into the street from a robbery of the Mayor’s reelection headquarters by the goons of Silvermane. When the men mention the cops doing nothing about the robbery, the bartender asks “What about The Spider?” From there, the men proceed to bash The Spider, who they say is out of shape since his return, and was never all that great to begin with. They also say he’s more interested in publicity than actually helping people.
All of this is within earshot of the very drunk Ben Reilly who snaps at the men, saying that maybe The Spider is like anyone else. “He’s swinging around burning buildings, saving people, you ever think he feels the heat? Or gets sad, or tired, or lonely?” Reilly yells at them before the men burst into laughter.
Reilly then stumbles out of the bar, slips his mask on and reenters a second later. He proceeds to beat the crap out of the five men, punching them, head-butting them and throwing them up against walls, all to the tune of a Jazzy cover of the Dean Martin hit “Sway (¿Quién será?).” To end the brawl, The Spider traps the men in webs on the walls of the bar while shouting “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” with every web he shoots. Victorious, he then cackles and asks for another drink from the bartender, whose bar he’s destroyed during the fight.
Image: Prime
The scene is absolutely hilarious for how unhinged Ben Reilly (and, by extension, Cage) is. Superheroes are obviously supposed to be above such pettiness as defending their reputation to barflies, but Reilly cannot resist. Also his drunken, stumbling, dirty fighting provides some great physical comedy, complemented by the put-upon bartender (Michael Patrick McGill) who can do nothing but pour Reilly another drink.
While this is played for laughs more so than the drama depicted in the comics, it made me think of the events of The Amazing Spider-Man #258 from 1984, where it’s revealed that the symbiote would sometimes take Peter Parker’s body out for joyrides while Peter is asleep. While the suit never specifically got into a bar brawl, it would beat up on criminals in a much more brutal way than Peter would, and Peter would wake up exhausted, but with no memoriy of the exploits from the night before.
Seeing Spider-Man in a drunken barfight was the best of many great surprises in Spider-Noir, and something that I cannot imagine the execs at Sony or Disney would ever approve of for a big-budget movie of Spider-Man, even if they did a proper, edgy take on the black suit someday. It’s also just not within Peter Parker’s more optimistic personality to really disgrace himself in such a way, which is why it’s absolutely perfect for Cage’s Ben Reilly.
Spider-Noir is streaming on Prime Video.