Why Spider-Noir Highlights the Potential for a Live-Action Batman Beyond Movie

It sounds absurd to put Spider-Noir and Batman Beyond in the same conversation. That is, until you realize they are making the same argument from opposite ends of the timeline: that superhero stories live or die on the integrity of their world. Amazon’s Spider-Noir series stars Nicolas Cage as Ben Reilly or The Spider. He is a depression-era version of the superhero, dropped into the moral sewage of 1930s New York. It is deeply committed to its own aesthetic.

That matters because sitting in the vault of unmade DC properties, gathering dust, is Batman Beyond. A sequel series to the venerable Batman: The Animated Series, it features Terry McGinnis, Neo-Gotham, 2039, and a dying Bruce Wayne handing the cowl to a teenager. It is also set in a world that looks like Blade Runner filtered through Shibuya.

​It is perhaps the most well-realized alternate universe expansion in the world of superhero animation. The fact that we still don’t have a live-action adaptation of this story is a crime. And Spider-Noir proves that there is space for an unorthodox and bizarre take on the superhero stories. We make that case.

But before that, here’s Spider-Noir in a nutshell:

Spider-Noir Shows Superheroes Work Better Outside the Formula

What Spider-Noir (and Sony’s own Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse that featured the Peter Parker version of the superhero, and its sequel Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse) understands, and what the MCU spent fifteen years forgetting, is that a superhero story is only as interesting as the world it’s set inside. Spider-Noir operates in a New York that is seething with noir elements, period-specific corruption, and lots of shadow.

Spider-Noir, which has been released in both black-and-white and color, takes away all the usual superhero tropes and relies on the substance of the material. It works. The result is something that feels genuinely interesting in the way the best pulp fiction always has. It is this commitment to tone that sets apart The Dark Knight from Thor: Ragnarok. It is precisely what Batman Beyond requires in live-action form.

Batman Beyond Already Has the Perfect Cyberpunk Blueprint

Terry McGinnis takes flight over Neo-Gotham in Batman Beyond | Credits: Warner Bros. Television Animation

Batman Beyond ran from 1999 to 2001, handing its creative team the rarest of gifts: a genuinely coherent visual and thematic identity from day one. Neo-Gotham is a city of vertical class warfare and bioluminescent corporate signage over crumbling infrastructure. The rich live above the smog line, and everyone else breathes the exhaust.

Terry McGinnis is the kid Bruce Wayne would never have been. He is poor, for one. The reversal of the myth (one of the chief characteristics of Bruce is that he is ultra-rich) creates a great deal of dramatic tension. 

The cyberpunk genre has found its cinematic language in Ridley Scott‘s Blade Runner. Batman Beyond already has that world blueprinted across 52 episodes and a feature-length film. The bones are there. There is a sleek black suit and a corporate villain in Derek Powers or Blight (we nominate Giancarlo Esposito for the role). Oh, and there is also an old Bruce Wayne who remains a significant presence in the series.

Why DC’s Future May Depend on Taking Bigger Stylistic Risks

Terry McGinnis and Bruce Wayne in the Batcave in Batman Beyond | Credits: Warner Bros. Television Animation

James Gunn‘s DC Universe reboot and the first movie, Superman, have generated early goodwill. But goodwill is borrowed money and it may not last. The tell is already visible: Warner Bros. is keeping Superman front and center while promoting Supergirl in a recent TV spot. The second film in your rebooted universe shouldn’t need the first film’s hero to sell tickets for it.

Batman Beyond represents the kind of swinging-for-the-fences project that could revitalize the DC brand, similar to what Thor: Ragnarok revived the Thor franchise. It is a story about succession and obsolescence, about what heroism looks like when the world that created it has moved on, and those are not small themes. They are, in fact, the themes of the moment.

Spider-Noir and even other similarly wacky superhero shows have demonstrated that a unique version of the superhero we know in a story set inside a fully committed aesthetic world can find an audience that’s hungry for exactly that. DC has its version of that story already written. The question is whether anyone in Burbank is paying attention.

Do you agree that Spider-Noir proves Hollywood is finally ready for a live-action Batman Beyond? Let us know in the comments.

Spider-Noir is streaming in its entirety on Prime Video.