After Morbius and Madame Web, it was almost impossible to give any pass to the Sony movie universe. The entire premise has always been ridiculous, to make films about Spider-Man characters and villains without utilizing Spider-Man in the films whatsoever. For some reason, Venom started off well which encouraged them to make more of these, and by “these” I mean films devoid of any merit. The latest entry is Kraven the Hunter, starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Sergei Kravinoff/Kraven the Hunter. Now, just how bad is this film? Let’s just say that before this film was released, Sony had quietly paused working on any further films in their “universe”.
[Warning – There will be major spoilers for Kraven the Hunter!]
Sony completely misunderstands every character in Kraven the Hunter
Kraven the Hunter starts with a decent action sequence, Kraven breaks into a Russian prison and kills a big mob boss which influences events later on. Then the film shifts into a long and drawn-out retelling of his origin story of acquiring his powers, alongside his brother Dmitri Kravinoff (Fred Hechinger). Under their father, Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe), Dmitri and Sergei have had a privileged yet semi-difficult upbringing with double standards, neglect, and shades of toxic masculinity.
Sergei finally gives up trying to appeal to his father and walks away from the Kravinoff family, along with abandoning his brother. While adjusting to his new location in the middle of nowhere in Russia, he sees poachers and kills them. Right there I was taken out of the movie, as Kraven is a big-game hunter, not an animal rights activist.
Calypso (Ariana DeBose) might have been the best part of the film, and even then, that’s not saying very much. Calypso is in the jungle when Sergei nearly dies and provides the potion that saves his life and imbues him with the abilities that turn him into Kraven The Hunter. After slipping a tarot card in his pocket, she’s absent from the movie until after a time-skip when Kraven does his yearly return to London to see his younger brother.
Now working as a lawyer, her friend and firm are in the crosshairs of mob bosses, such as the one Kraven kills in the opening scene of the movie. So, no longer is she a priestess but from a “long line of powerful women”, I wish I was paraphrasing, but this is nearly verbatim what her grandmother said to her. They didn’t even bother to hint at a romance between Calypso and Kraven, who at times were entangled with one another in their crusades against Spider-Man. At least they did give DeBose a few nice dresses and outfits that provided homage to her looks from the source material without being immodest.
The action is cool in this movie, but brief and cut out
There are the villains, Foreigner (Christopher Abbott) and Aleksei Sytsevich/Rhino (Alessandro Nivola). My only guess in how they got them to join this film was through blackmail. For the Foreigner, they only kept his trance-inducing powers and spy-like abilities, stripping him of his high-level physical condition. He stares at a person, counts to 3, and then holds them in place while the cool action happens off-camera.
Rhino suffers from some ridiculously named illness that has to be tempered with an IV solution to keep him from doing a physical transformation into Rhino. When the grand reveal of his form happens in the third act, it’s so laughably bad that you’re hoping for it to be over immediately. Only the Chameleon’s form at the end of the film is worse, which looks just like Sonny from I, Robot (not a compliment).
Going into this, the R rating made it a little more exciting than Venom which was PG-13. A little more blood, a few more brutal death scenes, the potential to go a little further. Sure, some moments rocked in seeing takedowns, punches, and Mike Tyson impersonations by ripping a dude’s ear off with Kraven’s teeth. But too often the cutaways or zoom-outs would void the craving (pun intended) for what could have been a ferocious kill. As mentioned above, it happened with the Foreigner multiple times to the point where you just wanted his scenes to fast-forward.
The last-minute edits and changes are evident in Kraven the Hunter
The opening 8 minutes are already available to watch on YouTube, you can see the awful ADR (guess they re-hired the folks from Madame Web) when Taylor-Johnson is speaking Russian with Seymon Chorney (Yuri Kolokolnikov). It happens a couple more times throughout the film, and that’s not even its worst aspect.
Some locales are cool and even look decent, but when the editing is bad, it’s atrocious. There was probably only one full scene that was legitimately filmed outside, and it might have been the car chase in London when Kraven runs to rescue his brother. Any others might have had some work in the open and then edited to hell.
It’s not exactly clear what direction they had for Kraven the Hunter at first, whether to make him an anti-hero or just warming him up as a villain down the line. Kraven kills people, instead of hunting animals. Yes, they are indeed really bad people, but how he chooses who to kill is overdone. He “makes a list” and you never get off it, his kills are so stealthy that they consider him a legend. Which is an insane 180 on a hunter, who kills to have trophies, to show off his prowess.
Then at the end of the film, his brother goes from a semi-sweet and naive younger sibling to head of the Kravinoff mob after Kraven has their father mauled by a bear. At this point, Chameleon has now visited the same doctor who treated Rhino and has been treated to have the shape-shifting powers that he is known for. Kraven is now conflicted on how to handle his brother and goes to retrieve a present left from his father, his signature Lion’s vest.
Kraven the Hunter was not only a series of mistakes, it was a bore, that absolutely did not warrant a two-hour runtime. Perhaps the shortcomings of this film may make Sony pause indefinitely and revisit their plans on handling the Spider-Man adjacent IP they sorely need to be taken away from them. Aside from the costumes for Calypso, there is virtually no value in seeing this film at all.
Kraven the Hunter is now in theaters! Have you seen the other Sony Universe films? Will you go see this one? Let us know on social media @mycosmiccircus @TheCosmicCircus.com on Bluesky or on our official Discord.
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