What is Kraven the Hunter?
Kraven the Hunter is either the latest—and possibly last—film in Sony’s attempt to launch an expanded cinematic universe centered on Spider-Man characters, OR it’s all a terrible dream I had.
Doesn’t this movie star Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Christopher Abbott, Alessandro Nivola, Ariana DeBose, Russell Crowe, and Fred Hechinger? That’s a great bunch of actors. How bad can it be?
Imagine your dentist drilling into a tooth without Novocain and then showing you a shirtless photo of Aaron Taylor-Johnson, as if that’s supposed to make up for the excruciating pain you are now experiencing.
Yikes. Well, what is Kraven the Hunter about?
Hunt…ing? I’m…I’m not sure. I don’t think it’s about anything. If “about” means “things happening in sequential order” then it’s about Sergei Kravinoff surviving a childhood of abuse and a lion mauling to become a superpowered man-animal (manimal) who hunts crime kingpins and kills them like a comic book Dexter. Then his younger brother, Dima, is kidnapped by a rival crime faction and Sergei, who is also called Kraven, goes to rescue him only it’s a trap so he teams up with animals to save his brother and take down the rival crime faction and his evil, abusive father once and for all but in the end, his bitter betty brother takes over the family crime empire and then Kraven decides to be a villain because his sh-thead brother called him mean. Or, I don’t know, maybe it’s about money.
Some of that actually sounds pretty cool. NONE of it works?
There is one scene between Alessandro Nivola and Christopher Abbott where they are bad guys discussing bad guy things and that ONE scene works, and someone should cast those two in a GOOD movie sometime.
Didn’t JC Chandor direct this? Surely he was able to do something with it.
Well, Kraven doesn’t look like sh-t, so that’s what JC Chandor did with it—he made it visually palatable.
Still, turning Kraven into a hunter whose prey are crimelords is kind of cool, right? It sounds cool on paper.
The first half of Kraven actually reframes Kraven as a solid anti-hero, someone who uses his manimal powers to kill poachers and defend endangered environments, which IS a pretty cool way to reimagine the character for the 21st century and our much more pro-conservation mindset. But he has to become a villain so that he can fight Spider-Man, when really, this Kraven, as established, probably wouldn’t give a sh-t about Spider-Man at all. They operate in completely different parts of the world, going after completely different levels of villains. Even if Kraven DID end up in the New York of Spider-Man, they’d probably be on the same side because it is WELL established that this Kraven only hunts super bad people doing super bad things. He would simply never have cause to go after Spider-Man under his own moral code.
What excuse do they give for why this Kraven might want to hunt Spider-Man somewhere down the line?
Kraven has arachnophobia.
That’s it?
That’s it.
That’s a pretty bad reason. Does this movie at least do something cool with the Rhino?
Well, Alessandro Nivola is certainly Doing Stuff On Screen, maybe some of it was fun for him. But no, the Rhino is, as always, completely f-cking stupid on screen. It’s a character designed to appeal to ten-year-olds in a comic book, every attempt to make the Rhino look menacing in live action is inherently ridiculous. He’s a cartoon character, leave the Rhino for animation.
But Christopher Abbott as an assassin called The Foreigner is sexy in a “surprise ice cube on your back” kind of way. I’m not sure I liked it, but I felt SOMETHING.
Sony may have cancelled this so-called spin-off universe, or maybe they’re just pressing pause, either way, there are currently no Spider-Man villain films in production. Do you think they should just let the Sinister Six movie die and focus on Spider-Man?
They should let the Sinister Six movie die. Or let me die. Someone should die. I have suffered enough.
Are you okay?
No, pal, I’m really not.
Kraven the Hunter is now playing exclusively in cinemas or maybe just my nightmares.