Nicolas Cage’s Spider-Man Series Just Outdid The MCU’s Spidey in 2 Huge Ways

Spider-Noir isn’t the first live-action Spider-Man TV show that has ever hit the airwaves, but it’s easily the best. Nicolas Cage takes the Spider-Man Noir character he created in the animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and brings it fully to life in his own Noir-inspired spinoff series. In the way that only Nicolas Cage can.

With its depiction of a 1930s Film Noir world, Spider-Noir is a Spider-Man series unlike any other put to screen. However, in some ways, it’s already doing some classic Spider-Man tropes better than the Marvel Cinematic Universe. For one thing, the tragic Spider-Man origin story inherently plays better as the backstory of a broken, Noir detective like Ben Reilly, as tragic pasts are part of the gumshoe formula. But what’s more surprising is that when it comes to action, Spider-Noir is doing better than the MCU version, and there’s one awesome sequence in particular that showcases it.

Spider-Noir‘s Bar Fight is Spider-Man (& Nic Cage) At His Best

SPOILERS FOLLOW! In Spider-Noir Episode 7, “Nobody’s Hero”, Ben Reilly (Cage) is at a low point in his battle against crime boss Silvermane (Brendan Gleeson) and his gang of metahuman enforcers. Reilly’s love interest, Cat Hardy (Li Jun Li) turns out to be a classic Noir femme fatale who betrays the gumshoe (shocker!) and reveals his secret identity as The Spider to shady Dr. Faber (Amy Aquino). Ben handles the heartbreak like most men would: getting blind drunk in a bar. When he’s good and sauced, Reilly overhears other patrons bad-mouthing The Spider and blaming his return for the chaos in the city, and takes the insults personally. He flips out and leaves the place, only to decide to mask up and re-enter the bar for an all-out brawl.

Director Greg Yaitanes (House of the Dragon, Your Friends and Neighbors) shoots the sequence in a manner that feels like an ode to Harry Hart’s (Colin Firth) now-classic bar fight in Kingsman: The Secret Service, albeit with a very Spider-Man twist. Cage is in full-steam ‘Cage-Mode’ as he cracks drunken one-liners, while the stunt choreography is a perfect showcase of what Spider-Man-style fighting should be, with the webbing, reflexes, arcrobatics, and super-strength giving The Spider an easy advantage, even outnumbered and in close quarters.

The MCU Can Learn From Spider-Noir

The MCU version of Spider-Man (played by Tom Holland) has become a generational icon, but there are still improvements to the character that can be made. Despite coming to his audition doing actual backflips, Holland’s Spidey hasn’t yet had an action sequence that has wowed fans or joined the ranks of the MCU’s best battles. Granted, most of those fights have been against superpowered bad guys who were either enhanced by tech (Vulture, Mysterio, Shocker, Doc Ock) or had legitimate superpowers or bio-enhancements (Lizard, Electro, Green Goblin, Thanos and the Black Order).

Holland’s Spider-Man has done very little street-level fighting with common crooks so that’s the first lesson to learn from Spider-Noir: mix the street-level action with the superpowered stuff. Cage’s Spider goes plenty of rounds with the likes of Megawatt (Andrew Lewis Caldwell), and Sandman (Jack Huston), but also has a great scene of fistacuffs in a bar. It’s weird, it’s wild, it’s Spider-Man done right, and actually feels like one of the most complete depicitions of the character we’ve seen in live-action.

The other standout is the stunt choreography: more than impressive for a TV series, and a smart use of Spider-Man’s powers in a fight, and then, the comedic touch of The Spider being drunk, and fighting like it. That’s the kind of touch that the MCU Spider-Man movies need, and hopefully its what director Destin Daniel Cretton will be bringing to Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Same goes for creating a world around Peter Parker where past tragedies feel just as weighted and important as they do in shaping Ben Reilly’s story. And, if rumors are true, Brand New Day could soon take the lead by turning Spider-Man’s trauma and angst into one of the biggest MCU crossover events we’ve seen.

Spider-Noir is streaming on Prime Video. Discuss the show with us on the ComicBook Forum! Spider-Man: Brand New Day will be released in theaters on July 31st.

An R-Rated MCU Spider-Man Is Now Officially Possible, Tom Holland Reveals