“I believe there is an animal in each of us, Dimitri.”
The quixotic, live-action Sony Spider-Verse sputters to a close with the underwhelming Kraven the Hunter, a remarkably clichéd, poorly written movie with myriad arcs and scenes lifted from better films. The predictable, paint-by-numbers plot is an inverted and bizarre mashup of Predator I and 2, wherein a superhuman jungle predator is at first hunted by mobsters in the neon-soaked streets of modern London. That predator then draws those cocksure pursuers to his lair in the lush and untrammeled Siberian wilderness so he can turn the tables and deal with them on his own turf.
Kraven the Hunter is a 2024 Sony Pictures film produced in partnership with Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios. It is directed by J.C. Chandor from a screenplay by Matt Holloway, Richard Wenk, and Art Marcum. Kraven the Hunter stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger and Allessandro Nivola with Russell Crowe and Cristopher Abbott.
First appearing in The Amazing Spider-Man (August 1964) and created by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee, Kraven, or Sergei Nikolaevich Kravinoff, is a highly-skilled, notorious nemesis who has battled the wall-crawler again and again over many years. Striking an absurd appearance, Kraven prefers to be clad in skin-tight, cheetah-print, yoga pants. He almost always wears a garish vest emblazoned with the visage of a lion that sports a thick, bristling brown mane upon Kraven’s shoulders and little else. An obsessive big-game hunter, Kraven figures the hardest, most honorable game to hunt in the whole wide world is a superhuman Spider-Man. He prefers to carry out those hunts in Spider-Man’s natural habitat, the sprawling mess of metal, brick, asphalt, and concrete known as Queens, NY.
“Fear will eat you.”
Thinking his teenage children Sergei and Dimitri are too fragile and delicate for his world, domineering Russian drug lord Nikolai Kravinoff (Crowe) pulls them from prep school and brings them to Africa to hunt lions. When Sergei finds himself confronted by a mighty, muscular, big cat in its prime, he is overcome with empathy and can’t shoot. Afraid for his boy, Nikolai unloads into the beast’s flanks but his fears are realized. The lion’s jaws clamp down on Sergei’s shoulder and with a roar of pain, the teeth get caught in his rucksack’s strap. The animal flees, pulling Sergei into the tall, opaque grass of the prairie leaving Dimitri and Nikolai to despair his loss. The wounded lion drags him far afield and dumps him for the young and curious Calypso to find. On vacation with her parents visiting family, she had been studying the art of tarot and learning Vodun mythos from her grandmother, who taught her about the Spirit of the Crossroads, Papa Legba, and gave her an elixir imbued with otherworldly vigor.
Unwilling to let the boy die before her, Calypso gives him the dose before frantically calling for her parents. Airlifted to a nearby hospital, the best efforts of the nurses and surgeons are for naught and Sergei expires on the operating table. However, moments after time of death is called, the magic medicine kicks in and Sergei awakens, his irises pulsing gold.
Nikolai and Dimitri are alerted and Sergei is taken back to London to recover. Sergei knows there’s something very different about him, that returning from the dead has changed him, enhanced him beyond the normal limits of humanity. Kravinoff finds himself continually disgusted with his father’s disparaging and disdainful treatment of Dimitri and despite knowing that his father is grooming him (but not his brother) to join in the drug business, he decides to depart, hopping a freighter bound for the Far East.
Years later, after honing his skills by traveling around the world, killing poachers, mooks, mobsters and murderers according to his own perverse sense of morality, Sergei (Taylor-Johnson) infamously becomes known as “Kraven the Hunter”.
After dispatching Seymon Chorney, a fearsome drug lord imprisoned in a maximum-security Russian prison, he returns to London. He’s come to visit Dimitri (Hechinger) on his birthday but has also finally been able to track down Calypso (DeBose), who is practicing law in the UK. Chorney’s death creates a vacuum which ripples through the local criminal hierarchy. Second-tier underboss Aleksei Sytsevich (Nivola), also known as The Rhino, sees an avenue for advancement. The only thing standing in his way is Nikolai. Too smart and cautious to attack Kravinoff head-on, he decides to kidnap Nikolai’s child Dimitri, who has become a popular nightclub crooner.
Unable to sleep on the ultra-cushioned, luxurious mattress in Dimitri’s guestroom, Sergei retreats to a park where he can rest on the rough ground. Returning the next morning, he finds signs of a struggle, the apartment tossed and his brother gone. Knowing of Calypso’s law firm’s propensity for finding people who don’t want to be found, he spills his guts to her and begs her for help.
Will Calypso trust a dangerous man she barely knows? Can Nikolai learn to love both of his sons for who they are? Will Dimitri discover the ability to overcome his cowardice and stand up for himself? Can Sergei discover Dimitri’s whereabouts without having to kill half of London? Who is the mysterious “Foreigner”? Why do they call Aleksei, “The Rhino”, anyway? Please see Kraven the Hunter if you’d like to find out.
“They say he is faster than a cheetah, more cunning than a fox, and stronger than a tiger!”
As befitting of the current, antagonist-as-protagonist trend (a wagon to which the other live-action Spider-Verse films have gleefully hitched themselves), Kraven the Hunter is a super-hero movie without a super-hero. The trend has dropped a lot of bombs on the box office and the live-action Sony Spider-Verse is responsible for many of those craters. If the question is, “Can you make a bad guy good?” the answer is yes, certainly, many movies have done face-turns and done them well. If the question is, “Is Kraven the Hunter a good movie?”, unfortunately, the answer is no.
The dialogue is leaden. The acting is wooden. The unsubtle, scenery-chewing Russel Crowe seems to have forgotten everything he knows about his craft. DeBose is plank-flat and the moody Taylor-Johnson sighs his way through his performance. Hechinger attacks his role with high spirits but manages to fly well over the top. The only player who seems to know that weird, weird shit is going on with the film is Nivola. His portrayal of the Rhino is unusual to say the least. Nivola’s interpretation of the character is light years from the villain’s comic book origins and is easily the most entertaining thing about the picture.
Everything is too easy. Nothing is difficult or even complicated for Kraven and as such, there is zero dramatic tension. There is an attempt at it towards the end, when Kraven duels with the formidable Foreigner (Abbott), a character amped far beyond his comic book roots as a humble, unenhanced human and given an inexplicable power-set by Chandor that could’ve been super-hypnosis or super-speed but was kept super-ambiguous. Their confrontation is resolved in the most unsatisfying way possible, followed by the film racing off to the next set piece. The movie is in such a hurry to prime for the sequel and wrap that some characters vanish before the final reel, with Calypso and Sytsevich’s loyal Pitt Bull (who had been at Aleksei’s side throughout) disappearing before the denouement.
CG effects are fairly weak, with Kraven’s wall-running, the polar bear and the water buffalo stampede (as well as its climactic reprise) looking particularly sloppy. The film bounces from upstate NY to the Siberian wilds, the heart of London, the plains of Africa and the mountains of Turkey. The globe-spanning locations are beautiful but sadly not worth the price of admission.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson needs to have a long talk with his agent. He is not having luck choosing superhero roles. His Kraven, an anti-poaching, animal-advocating, world-weary, murderous vigilante with super-human abilities from a mystical potion pulsing with the power of Papa Legba, the Spirit of the Crossroads, is just a goofy character. His hackneyed Kraven-Lair (like “stately Wayne Manor”) has a hidden armory that springs open when a lion sculpture is moved, and a secret button is pressed. Taylor-Johnson repeatedly engages in stunt sequences similar to Steve Rogers’ exploits in the MCU. This reviewer found himself with a long list in his notes: “Cap did that” (check), “…and that” (check), “…annnd that.”
The thing is, in a world supposedly without super-heroes, no one seems to notice his abilities and if they do, they don’t care about his inhuman escapades. You’d think someone would send some smart phone footage to CNN or the Daily Bugle (which DOES exist in the film).
This reviewer does not understand the conceit of the live-action Sony Spider-Verse series of films. Is Andrew Garfield supposed to be going about his Spider-Man stuff off-screen as these villains just go about their daily business, having their origin stories and getting all villainous? Is the goal to hold the license for the IP in perpetuity, keeping Spider-Man out of Marvel Studio’s hands? If so, this is not the way to go about it. Kraven the Hunter is constructed with a sequel in mind. It will most likely not receive one. Though it’s not nearly as bad as Madame Web or Morbius, Kraven the Hunter isn’t a good movie.
Kraven the Hunter is in theatres 12/13/24.
Kraven the Hunter and the Chameleon were created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.
The Rhino was created by Stan Lee and John Romita Sr.
Calypso was created by Denny O’Neil and Alan Weiss.
The Foreigner was created by Peter David and Rich Buckler.
Brian Isaacs - Executive Editor / Publisher