How Breaking Bad Gave Us Spider-Noir

Sometimes the most influential moments in storytelling aren't explosions, moving speeches, or heart-breaking plot twists.

Sometimes it's a man...starting at a suitcase.

In an interview with Variety, Nicolas Cage explained that watching Breaking Bad changed the way he viewed television acting. Specifically, he pointed to seeing Bryan Cranston as Walter White spending what felt like minutes just starting at a suitcase.

Silence. Tension. Storytelling.

Spider-Noir Credit: Aaron Epstein/Prime

In that moment, Cage says he saw something movies don't often provide. Time. Time for atmosphere. Time for character development in those small moments where tension breathes. In Cage's words, "the luxury of time to tell their story." A COVID watch of Breaking Bad with his son may have led us to Spider-Man's strangest and stylistically ambitious projects we've seen.

Many people are familiar with Spider-man, and we were first introduced to Cage's interpretation in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. In the first animated outing of the trilogy, Cage voiced a monochrome version of the web-slinger pulled from a 1930s universe where he was a private detective to pay the bills.

Credit: Aaron Epstein/Prime

Spider-Noir, as he is called to differentiate himself from the others, brought the gritty comic book character to life without making the ideal of an old, depressed, hard-nosed detective seem silly or out of placed. Then Sony expanded that idea into live action with a partnership with Prime Video.

And this is where an interesting twist starts to come into view. This is not Peter Parker, nor is it the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. We have Ben Riely, a clone of Peter Parker in comics continuity. We have The Spider, a more violent and gritty shadow but without the venom symbiote that fans would expect.

This Noir-inspired story thrives in the moral ambiguity of many of the period pieces of those times. It has rough edges, cigarette smoke, corrupt cops, and shoot outs that would taint the Peter Parker we've seen on screen in the MCU.

Long-form storytelling is the ideal medium for the moody tonal shift that defines Spider-Noir. It thrives in silence, lingering as the detective works to crack the case; not through quick thinking, exposition dumps, or rapid editing, but through late-night stakeouts and quiet, introspective moments at the bar after downing another drink. Wondering, perhaps, if without powers truly means no responsibility.

Apparently, Walter White starting at a suitcase helped Nicolas Cage realize exactly that. And now we have the creative masterpiece that is: Spider-Noir.