Remember back when Madam Web came out and we all hoped Sony would do better with its Marvel properties with Kraven the Hunter? Yeah, we need to keep hoping. It seems as if Sony just doesn’t even care about these Marvel movies anymore.
Kraven the Hunter is about a Russian man named Sergei Kravinoff (Aaron Taylor-Johnson from Nosferatu) who survived a lion attack as a boy when a girl named Calypso (Ariana DeBose from I.S.S.) gave him a special elixir. The potion not only saved his life, but gave him incredible strength, speed, and agility. As a grown man, he decides to use these new skills to become Kraven the Hunter, a vigilante who goes after the worst of the worst criminals.
Unfortunately for Kraven, his father, Nikolai (Russell Crowe from The Exorcist), is himself one of these worst of the worst, and soon enough, The Hunter, with help from Calypso, finds himself embroiled in a plot to save his brother, Dmitri (Thelma’s Fred Hechinger), from going down the same path as their father. This puts Kraven at odds with supervillains like Rhino (The Brutalist’s Alessandro Nivola) and The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott from Poor Things).
Directed by J.C. Chandor (A Most Violent Year, Margin Call), Kraven the Hunter was written by Richard Wenk (the Equalizer movies) along with Art Marcum and Matt Holloway (who both also worked on the screenplays for Iron Man and Punisher: War Zone). The character is based on the Spider-Man nemesis of the same name, but Kraven the Hunter hardly feels like a Spider-Man movie. The webslinger does not make an appearance, although some of his other adversaries do, and Calypso is seen at one point reading the Daily Bugle’s website. So, we’re in the same universe. But it’s not the same kind of movie.
Kraven is one of the cooler and more formidable Spider-Man villains, so Kraven the Hunter feels a bit like a wasted opportunity. The story itself is silly, but the film’s treatment of that silliness is deadpan serious, so there’s an odd tonal competition. Rather than completely giving itself over to the cornball comic book-ness of the plot, the movie tries to be a hard-boiled thriller. It doesn’t understand its own assignment.
Except for Russell Crowe. As Nikolai Kravinoff, Crowe gets it. His stoic expressions and Boris Badenov accent are totally in on the joke that the rest of the movie doesn’t know that it’s telling. While his castmates, even the guys playing shapeshifters and human rhinoceroses, are trying to find their thespian motivations, Crowe is chewing every stick of the scenery he steals.
The script itself doesn’t do the actors any favors. Just as was the case with Madam Web, much of the dialogue feels emotionless and generic, almost as if it was written by AI. Which, honestly, in this cinematic climate, wouldn’t be too much of a surprise. But it also could just be that not even the writers care too much about these characters anymore aside from making a movie to hold onto the rights.
The filmmaking is inconsistent as well. Some of the stunt work is exciting, just as one would expect from a movie like this, but even the fight scenes are drowned in computer-generated effects. And the CG is bad. Really bad. The CG animals that Kraven protects and befriends are particularly unconvincing. It would be a struggle to find a movie with worse CG lions and bison than Kraven the Hunter.
Kraven the Hunter doesn’t quite know what kind of movie it’s trying to be. It functions as an origin story for Kraven, but never really digs into the nuts and bolts of the character, it just shows a bit of his backstory before it sends him off on a side quest. Certain aspects, such as his relationships with Calypso and Dimitri, are underdeveloped, so by the time the audience needs to care about these characters, they don’t. Hand-to-hand combat only goes so far. Audiences need to care about a story, and in the case of Kraven the Hunter, they don’t. It’s a mess.
Kraven is a great character, and even this Aaron Taylor-Johnson incarnation has potential. There are all sorts of directions Sony can go with this antihero. They can pit him against Spider-Man, team him up with Spider-Man, toss him into a Sinister Six movie, or even explore his children who picked up his hunting habits in the comics. But whatever they wind up doing with Kraven the Hunter, let’s just hope it turns out better than Kraven the Hunter.
GRADE: D
MPAA Rating: R for strong bloody violence and language
Release Date: December 13, 2024
Running Time: 2 hour 7 minutes
Studio: Columbia Pictures
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