‘Spider-Man Noir’ Chose Ben Reilly As Nic Cage’s Alter Ego Because Clone Was Easier To Sell As “Older And Jaded” Compared To Peter Parker
With the decision being one of the upcoming MGM Amazon series’ most head-scratching, the Spider-Man Noir production team say they chose Ben Reilly as the live-action alter ego of Nic Cage’s feodra’d web-slinger because the usually-scarlet-clad clone’s history made it name easier to sell him as a “jaded” detective compared to Peter Parker.
This insight into the hero’s live-action name-change was provided by series showrunner Oren Uziel, producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller (the latter two whose previous Spider-experience includes their helming of the animated Spider-Verse franchise), and its aforementioned star Cage during a recent interview given to Esquire’s Anthony Breznican in service of the outlet’s February Spider-Man Noir cover story.
Noting that in addition to his alter ego, the titular hero’s costumed identify will also be renamed from ‘Spider-Man Noir’ to the more pulp-reminiscent ‘The Spider’ for partially the same reasons, Uziel explained that Ben was chosen to lead the series over any potential take on Peter because the latter” Peter Parker “feels very synonymous with a high school kid. Boyish. On his way up.”
“Ben Reilly has already gone through the entire arc and has seen it all. He’s over it, and trying to move past it. But his past kind of keeps coming back to haunt him. It’s just a different version that we haven’t seen before.”
To this end, Miller further detailed how “This character’s very different from the Peter Parker from the movies. He’s older and jaded, and not afraid to punch a guy in the face drunkenly,” with Lord adding that Ben “already had his Chinatown disillusionment moment that happened years and years ago.”
However, more than just a play at being ‘different’ than most Spider-Man adaptations – and ostensibly deference to various rights contracts regarding character names and depictions – Lord teased, “I have to be coy about the reasons, because you’ll find out, [but] the reason he’s named Ben Reilly is explained.”
Putting a stamp on the matter, Cage himself told Breznican, “There’s a reason for it, believe it or not, above and beyond just mashing the flavors of 1930s film performance and Marvel iconography. There’s an actual reason, an origin story, why Ben talks the way he talks. But you’ll get to that in a later episode.”
A particularly curious move considering that there exists no version of Ben across the entire Marvel multiverse that has ever even glanced at a fedora, much less donned the hard-boiled moniker, the Spider-Man Noir team’s reasoning only serves to raise more questions about the name-change, as if they really wanted an established Spider-Man-related comic book character whose identity could be more easily believed as an angsty pulp protagonist, they could have gone Peter’s other clone, Kaine.
Born deformed and slightly unhinged from reality thanks to a flaw in The Jackal’s cloning process and holding a grudge against both his ‘father’ and his ‘brothers’ for his circumstances, Kaine was almost ripped straight from the pages of a 1960s detective novella – and yet they decided to go with Ben, who for all intents and purposes both literally and figuratively is ‘Peter Parker #2’? (Hell, Ben just spent a good chunk of the current Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 7 flawlessly impersonating Peter).
A strange decision no matter how one approaches it, the true mystery behind Ben Reilly’s appearance in Spider-Man Noir will be revealed when the Nic Cage-led series debuts sometime later this year.
