Spider-Noir has brought something completely new to the table by allowing viewers to choose their preferred viewing format. The show offers a choice between watching it in “Authentic Black-and-White” and “True-Hue Full Color.” But why are there two formats, and what is the ideal way to watch the acclaimed series?
Why is Spider-Noir in color and black and white?
Spider-Noir is set in 1930s New York. The Depression-era superhero drama follows Nicolas Cage’s Ben Reilly, who stumbles upon a major controversy while working as a detective.
The tone of the series replicates the hard-boiled film noirs of the 1940s and 1950s. As a result, the black-and-white approach is used to pay tribute to Hollywood classics such as The Maltese Falcon and Double Indemnity.
However, the creators also decided to offer another option for comic book fans. The second format, which also pays tribute to classic Hollywood films, features exaggerated colors and hues. These are similar to those seen in Chinatown.
One format provides an authentic film noir look and feel. The other allows viewers to appreciate finer visual details and a more comic-inspired presentation.
“There’s a reason this hasn’t been done before,” show’s creator Oren Uziel said (via The Wrap), “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 not have seen before, in a style that might open you up to 100 movies you don’t know about.
He continued, “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.”
Spider-Noir is streaming on Prime Video.
