Kraven's complex relationship with his ruthless father starts him down a path of vengeance, motivating him to become not only the greatest hunter in the world, but also one of its most feared. How in the hell did Sony end up here? So far there have been six of these Spider-Man character spinoff movies and somehow not a single one of them is good on an objective level. It’s quite pathetic to be honest, and the noticeable absence of Spider-Man in these films have made for a lack of compelling stories and conflicts between characters. Kraven The Hunter’s first half hour deals a lot with Sergei, his brother Dmitri, and their father Nikolai, a ruthless crime lord. The movie tries to make you as the viewer care about Sergei’s relationship with his brother, but none of it feels natural. Whether it’s a bad script, mediocre acting, or workmanlike execution, I had trouble finding myself invested in the characters. Aaron Taylor Johnson kind of just wings it as Kraven, never quite fully embodying the characteristics of comic book Kraven. Sure, he displays a heightened sense of smell and wrestles with wild animals, but his persona comes off as a generic millennial version of Kraven. Half the time, Johnson looks bored and the other half is forced to utter the nonsensical dialogue with no real emotion or authenticity. I would say that the movie started out with a promising opening scene involving Kraven escaping from a prison. My brother sitting right next to me said “this just feels like one of those movies where this will be the best scene.” And it surely was, which is not saying much.
Russel Crowe is one of my favorite actors and gets reduced to a super generic character whose only purpose is to be a vessel for predictable and cliché dialogue. Even Sergei’s brother Dmitri makes fun of his father’s ridiculous fake Russian accent, almost like the writers and actors know how stupid it is. In terms of villains, this movie has Rhino played by Alessandro Nivola. What a bizarre take on the character this was. The explanation for how he got his superhuman strength was so lazy and contrived that it’s just a throwaway line in reference to a character only hardcore comic fans like me would understand. Name dropping all these comic book characters who supposedly exist in this world and never doing anything with them is a specialty of Sony’s Spider-Man-less Spiderverse. There even is one point about halfway through the movie where Rhino in his human form has this spaz attack in the middle of a conversation with one of his henchmen. Peak moment of unintentional hilarity. Unfortunately, this movie isn’t goofy enough to have those constant “so bad it’s good” moments to make it a guilty pleasure viewing. It also isn’t serious enough for me to call it “dark” or “edgy.” The R rating is used for sure in regard to visible blood, but there is a noticeable lack of action in general and when there are fight scenes, they often are cut short. There is only one scene with the actual Rhino and it’s his final battle against Kraven which was underwhelming and anticlimactic.
Another thing that took me out of the movie was the horribly obvious audio dubbing. The character Calypso played by Ariana DeBose especially had horrendous audio dubbing and in my opinion, was the worst actor in this whole movie by far. Perhaps the only truly interesting character in this movie was Dmitri played by Fred Hechinger. As fans of the comics may know, Dmitri is the Spider-Man villain known as the Chameleon. He gets a nice little reveal at the end showing he can now change appearances and I will admit that this brief was pretty cool and accurate to how he looks in the comics. There’s a fun sequence with Kraven running after a car in an attempt to save his kidnapped brother from Rhino’s men and a few solidly brutal traps/kills executed by Kraven. Other than that, I was bored for a vast majority of this movie. It’s a sure sign Sony has proven that they don’t have a handle on what fans want. The new information coming out about how Sony could have used Tom Holland’s Spider-Man in these movies but just didn’t is a further slap in the face to the fans. Overall, Sony's Marvel Universe of Spider-Man related characters comes to an expectedly underwhelming conclusion, as Kraven The Hunter is neither insultingly horrible like Madame Web nor so bad it's good like the Venom films. Let this be a lesson to Sony that most fans and general audiences don't want to see a Spider-Man related movie with absolutely no Spider-Man in it.
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