Editorials
‘Spelunky 2’ Kills Me Over and Over…and I Love It
This time, I tell myself. This time I’ll see the arrow traps before I jump into their path. This time I’ll time that step and not end up impaled on spikes. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll get through the opening stages with all hearts intact and a bag full of bombs.
Then a mole rat tunnels out of the ground and knocks me into the path of a large lizard that looks a lot like a certain Presidential figure, only a bit less abhorrent, and that then punts me into the wall over and over, my lifeless body now in some grim game of squash.
That was the 15th attempt at beating the roguelite adventure Spelunky 2 on that particular evening. I had previously scraped and clawed my way deeper into the ever-evolving moon caves, almost tasting victory. This time I’d fallen at the first hurdle, merely 20 seconds into the run. I would have to start from the top yet again. I couldn’t count how many times since the game released that I’d had to restart, but it was certainly a lot. In some cases, that would warrant a shout of angry frustration.
But I laughed.
I laughed because there’s a dark comedy to the constant, random, and almost unfair, manner in which Spelunky 2 kills you. As with the original Spelunky, you pick an adventurer, and try to get to the bottom of an increasingly difficult set of changing caves without perishing, all in the pursuit of some lifting a strange curse that afflicts anyone who sets foot in the caves. If, sorry, when you die, you come back to life at the entrance again and again until you finally escape the curse. It’s sort of like Raiders of the Lost Ark meets Happy Death Day.
The Happy Death Day comparison is especially apt as the cycle of jumping in with a bit more knowledge each time, hoping to break out of this deathloop, is similar, as are the initial results. Just when you think you have it all figured out, Spelunky 2 hits you with some absurd variation on what you know, and there’s your twitching corpse slowly sliding down a set of spikes because you didn’t see that spider drop down from the ceiling.
Never has a game had such wonderful comedic timing for my imminent failure. Sometimes it’s a surprise scorpion in an item box. Another time it could be a misunderstanding at the item shop that leads to the shopkeeper coming for murderous vengeance with his shotgun. The beauty of Spelunky 2 is that you genuinely never know what your next cause of death will be, no matter how many times you go through it. That should be a clear route to frustration and annoyance, but there’s a grisly curiosity about what fate has in store for you this time that almost matches the desire to ‘win’.
There are times it seems like Spelunky 2 can read my mind. One time, on a rather successful run, I think ‘I’ve got loads of bombs, extra life hearts, and this snazzy jetpack. I’m gonna breeze this next stage’, only for my casual jet-fueled descent to be bludgeoned coldly by a fire-breathing dog that sets off a chain reaction of calamity.
The fireball from that hellhound’s maw knocked me back, thankfully onto solid ground. I get up, and move just in time to avoid a menacing metal cudgel that drops from above on a long chain, and drives through the floor next to me. A near miss! My luck is surely in?
In a split second, I notice that there’s lava now pouring through the gap below me, covering the floor. That will make any escape to the exit tricky as just touching a dollop of it means instant death. So I move in the opposite direction, hoping to blow my way out elsewhere with my plentiful supply of bombs.
Unfortunately, I don’t see that one of the game’s neanderthal-like enemies had clocked my less than gracious landing, and is now barreling toward me like a meaty battering ram. I panic, fumble with the button input, and fling a bomb in his direction without thinking about the consequences. The bomb hits him, stunning him briefly, but it puts him and the bomb in close proximity to me. Either I risk rushing past into potentially unseen danger before I blow myself up, or I risk trying to find a way to the exit in the increasingly lava-filled floor in the other direction.
I choose the latter because there’s no time to think beyond ‘I can at least see what I’m getting myself into’ and I leap to a platform just the other side of the lava spill. That’s when the bomb explodes and sends the caveman’s corpse my way at speed. He knocks me off my perch, and onto the floor below. I lose some health from the impact and the subsequent drop, but I’m still alive and as it turns out, not far from the exit.
A brief moment of relief as I once again feel confident of pushing on deeper into the caves. Then another cudgel drops and obliterates me just before the exit. All that happened in seconds. I sit slack-jawed at the ridiculous nature of my brutal demise. Final Destination’s Grim Reaper couldn’t have set up a sillier set of circumstances leading up to that death.
But I hit restart almost immediately, eager to begin the cycle once more. This time I might make it all the way, but if I don’t, I know there’s a good chance I’ll be dying a very dishonorable, and likely hilarious, death. Spelunky 2’s loop means I don’t really fear death and failure. Instead, there’s a morbid fascination with what untold bastardry it will throw at me in order to prevent my escape. Strangely, the only fear is that I’m going to escape the death traps, the monsters, the cavemen, the lava, and those bloody mole rats for good one of these days, and when I do, the wonder of an unknown fate that makes me love Spelunky 2 so much might vanish.
But really, I believe my eventual victory lap will probably end up with me doing something masterfully stupid in the opening level, as the game concocts another of its devious schemes to help dispose of me in the most humiliating, but amusing, way possible.
Comics
‘Spider-Noir’ Comic Changes Explained: How the TV Series Reinvents Marvel’s Darkest Spider-Man
A little while back, I wrote an article chronicling the Hellraiser franchise’s affinity for Film Noir and touched on how that genre has, historically, always been connected to horror.
This connection can be observed in everything from the cannibalistic serial killers of Frank Miller’s Sin City to the disturbing criminal plots fueling neo-noir thrillers like Stuart Gordon’s underrated King of the Ants. That’s why it came as no surprise when I finally sat down to watch all eight episodes of Prime Video’s recently released Spider-Noir series and was confronted with plenty of classic horror tropes.
What did come as a surprise, however, was how showrunners Oren Uziel and Steve Lightfoot approached these horror elements when compared to the 2009 comic book that the show is based on. From the heavily altered rogue’s gallery to an equally terrifying yet completely different origin story for Nicolas Cage’s take on the webslinger, there are plenty of changes here that I feel might be of interest to genre fans.
With that in mind, I’d like to invite readers to take a closer look at all the adjustments that Spider-Noir made to the story in order to bring this incarnation of Spider-Man to life in all of its monochromatic glory (unless you watched the True-Hue color version of the show, in which case you’ll be treated to a surprisingly comic-booky palette that you don’t usually see on television).
The Dark Origins of Marvel’s Spider-Man Noir
Our first order of business should be to examine the origins of the Noir comics themselves. Originally published as part of the Marvel Noir alternate universe that reimagined several characters as hard-boiled crime-fighters, Spider-Man Noir became the most successful book in the entire run. This highly politicized story about Peter Parker coming to terms with the capitalist evils of the Great Depression seemed to have struck a nerve with audiences looking for a darker take on the wall-crawler, which is likely why we’d soon see several sequel stories as well as a video game adaptation of the character in 2010’s underrated Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions.
Of course, it wasn’t just Spider-Man’s darker disposition that made this version of the character a hit, as 1930s New York City was depicted as being much more hostile than what we generally see in the standard Marvel Universe. From Peter’s powers coming from an Eldritch Spider God that spawns man-eating arachnids to Vulture being an ex-Freak-Show Gimp with a taste for human flesh, you can definitely understand why this Web-Head isn’t pulling his punches.
Unfortunately, this alternate universe was a little too popular for its own good, with each subsequent sequel/adaptation further diluting the political anger and classic horror influences that fueled the original comic-book run in order to appeal to a wider audience. Spider-Man Noir was nearly unrecognizable once we got to the Spider-Verse crossover that turned the character into a household name, though this would at least lead to an interesting adaptation in 2018.
The Classic Horror Influences Hidden Throughout Spider-Noir
Jack Huston as Sandman in ‘Spider-Noir’
When Phil Lord and Chris Miller finally translated Spider-Man Noir to the big screen, with Nicolas Cage bringing the character to life in an unexpected case of pitch-perfect casting, he was still mostly relegated to comic relief as his nazi-punching antics and over-the-top edginess were played for laughs. However, while this version of the character had little to do with the comics that spawned him, Spider-Noir’s newfound popularity eventually resulted in the announcement of a darker live-action spin-off – a spin-off that I was cautiously optimistic about.
While the showrunners ultimately decided to go in a completely different direction than the 2009 comic, the new team of writers appeared to understand Noir as a genre in ways that even the folks at Marvel Noir couldn’t quite grasp. That’s likely why 2026’s Spider-Noir boasts plenty of horror elements, just not in ways we’ve seen them before.
The series is obviously borrowing tropes and aesthetics from period-accurate monster movies, with Universal’s 1930s output being a particularly big influence. From the re-imagining of Sandman and Tombstone as tragic figures to The Spider even being operated on by a mad scientist with hilariously antiquated techniques, this bizarre collection of super-powered freaks could have easily shown up in a classic creature feature.
The scares aren’t all retro, however, as the showrunners also injected plenty of body-horror into the mix during their attempt at unifying the origin stories for all these larger-than-life characters. Hell, the Spider himself is now revealed to have gained his powers after being bitten by a half-mutated Man-Spider during World War I, and the aforementioned mad scientist keeps a disturbing collection of failed experiments in her basement, proving that not all of her patients were lucky enough to simply gain superpowers after being experimented on.
Nicolas Cage Reinvents Spider-Man Noir for Television
Ben Reilly/Spiderman (Nicolas Cage) in SPIDER-NOIR
Photo: Aaron Epstein/Prime
© Amazon Content Services LLC
I also really appreciate how Cage insists on depicting Ben Reilly as an arachnid trapped inside of a human body, with his uncanny physical performance and classic Hollywood impressions keeping your eyes glued to the screen while also providing some of the show’s funniest moments.
I still think it’s a shame that the character is no longer politically motivated, and I miss the detail about Uncle Ben having been cannibalized by Vulture after his social activism ruffled too many feathers, but at least this time our protagonist actually feels like someone who could have been written by Raymond Chandler if he were a fan of Superheroes.
In fact, the writers nailed the snappy back-and-forth that Noir authors like Dashiel Hammett used to refer to as the “riposte”, and it’s fun to see supervillains being depicted as horrific movie monsters instead of specialized henchmen – with The Spider feeling like just as much of a Freak Show attraction as the rest of them. Purists might be put off by the lack of reverence for the source material, but I think that’s a small price to pay when even the show’s most clichéd moments intentionally harken back to the golden age of Hollywood.
That’s why I’d argue that Amazon’s Spider-Noir isn’t really an adaptation, but rather an equally valid take on the same premise that inspired Marvel back in 2009. And in a world filled with recycled storylines that only serve to advertise future releases, I’d rather have two completely different visions of the same character than a straight-up retelling of the same handful of ideas.
At the end of the day, there’s enough space inside this comic fan’s heart for both man-eating Vultures and a Cronenberg-inspired Man-Spider. And if you’re also a fan of nostalgic creature features with comic book flair, I’d highly recommend this street-level superhero story with a spooky twist.
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