Director J.C. Chandor preemptively asked all of us to be nice to his Kraven the Hunter film, imploring us to forget the past failures of Sony’s Spider-Man Extended Universe. Unfortunately for that man, he not only made a movie that brings more attention to why these Spider-Man villain movies aren’t working, but the film—which debuted with a 15% Rotten Tomatoes score—might’ve also given Sony all the reason it needs to have the entire cinematic universe collapse on itself.
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In Kraven the Hunter, Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays Sergei Kravinoff, a man whose issues with his overbearing father (Russell Crowe) drive him to the life of an assassin, and who benefits from superhuman powers gained when his blood mixed with that of a lion that savagely attacked him. In his quest to seek revenge on his father, he protects his half-brother Dmitri Smerdyakov (Fred Hechinger) and asserts himself as an alpha predator in a world full of prey. He eventually becomes one of Spider-Man’s biggest rivals. But, in this movie, he’s apparently the center of one of the most confusing origin stories in superhero movie history.
Germain Lussier, writing for Gizmodo, predicts Kraven will frustrate viewers in a review bearing the headline, “You’ll Be Craving Some Aspirin After the Headache That Is Kraven the Hunter.” David Ehrlich called the film a “Shirtless Whimper” of an ending to Sony’s Expanded Spider-Man Universe in his IndieWire review. Meanwhile, in her ScreenRant review, Molly Freeman asserts that the film saddles itself with the superfluous origin stories of too many characters. In a movie titled Kraven the Hunter, we unnecessarily get origin stories from Rhino (Alessandro Nivola) and Calypso (Ariana DeBose), and the Foreigner (Christopher Abbott). “There are so many characters crammed into this movie and none of them are fully developed.”
It appears the film had no idea what kind of movie it wanted to be, making its very existence a conundrum no one is interested in figuring out. Why does the CGI look like it’s from before the iPhone came out? Who’s telling Russell Crowe his Russian accent is good? Why are Taylor-Johnson’s scene-stealing talents being wasted on dialogue so cringe-worthy there should be a warning before the movie about the film possibly inducing vomiting?
But it’s Alison Willmore’s Vulture review that ruthlessly asks the central question at the heart of the disdain for the movie, a question we implicitly asked when finding better Spider-Man villains to make a movie about: Is a character as silly as Kraven the Hunter even worth making a movie about? And if so, why would you take him so seriously?
This is a movie about an extremely silly antihero who lives in a glass geodesic dome in Siberia, kills a bunch of people using a tooth he extracts from a head-on leopard-skin rug, and secures the respect of wild animals by flashing yellow eyes at them. Treating his family trauma with any gravity — by, say, diverging into a 20-minute flashback in the first act — is the kiss of death to whatever off-kilter momentum the movie manages to build.
Outside of Venom, none of the other villain-focused movies from Sony’s Spider-Man universe have gotten sequels. Kraven the Hunter is projected to have an embarrassingly low opening weekend box office haul of $15 million, well below what it would need to earn to warrant making more of these Kraven movies. As David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter writes, it might be best to lay this half-man, half-lion down to rest for good:
Mostly, the drab-looking, sluggish movie seems to exist to lay groundwork for future installments in which over-qualified actors like DeBose and Hechinger might be given more to do and Kraven’s vigilantism might have a clearer sense of purpose. Or, now that he’s got that Viking-chic fur-trimmed vest to strike the iconic pose in, perhaps he’ll turn more unequivocally villainous? But those are all big maybes in a movie that doesn’t exactly scream, “Sequel!”
It was fun (to make fun of) while it lasted, but Kraven the Hunter’s reviews all but spell the end for any sort of Spider-Man cinematic universe. Honestly, Sony is better off for it.
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