Nicolas Cage’s ‘Spider-Noir’ Just Broke a Marvel Record on Rotten Tomatoes — and the Reviews Explain Why

Nobody quite knew what to make of Spider-Noir before it launched. A 1930s noir take on Spider-Man, starring Nicolas Cage, on Amazon Prime Video — it was ambitious in the specific way that can go either beautifully right or memorably wrong.

It went right. The series debuted Wednesday on Prime Video and has already done something no Marvel project has done before: it set the all-time audience score record on Rotten Tomatoes across all Marvel properties. Per Forbes, Spider-Noir sits at a 91% critic score and 92% audience score — placing it above every Marvel series including the beloved X-Men ’97 (91% audience), the original Netflix Daredevil (90%), and Agents of SHIELD (91%).

The show stars Cage as Ben Reilly, a world-weary private eye working in Depression-era New York who leads a secret life as the city’s only masked superhero, known as “The Spider.” The series leans hard into its noir influences — black-and-white-tinged visuals, voiceover narration, jazz-era New York — and uses the aesthetic as a foundation rather than a gimmick.

What the Critics Are Saying

The Financial Times gave it four out of five stars: “Audiences have had enough of the churn of movie sequels and their declining quality. But shows like this are well-crafted enough, adult enough, and just about original enough, to offer a deserved moment of reprieve.” The Daily Telegraph matched the score: “Spider-Noir is as much a tribute to the golden era of sleuthing flicks as it is to caped crusaders getting their tights in a twist.”

Not every review was glowing — per Just Jared’s roundup, Vulture called it “just another disposable exercise in IP maintenance,” and the LA Times described it as “something of a stunt.” But those were outliers in an otherwise strong reception.

The Cage Factor

Multiple reviews single out Cage’s performance as the engine that makes the show work — specifically, the physical and vocal creativity he brings to Ben Reilly’s habit of adopting disguises. In one episode, he slips into a full Peter Lorre impression — voice, posture, the hand on the back of the head — to talk his way past a suspicious doctor. In another, he channels Humphrey Bogart, flipping up his hat brim, donning thick glasses, and inventing a character called Pete the maintenance man. In a third, he becomes a bumbling Jimmy Stewart type to get past hospital staff.

It’s the kind of unhinged, committed Cage performance that audiences tend to reward, and in this case it’s calibrated to the material in a way that doesn’t feel like a joke.

The show was produced by the team behind the Spider-Verse animated films and, per early analysis of the series, does quietly connect to the broader Marvel multiverse — though it’s not part of the MCU proper. Season 1 is streaming now on Prime Video.