After Morbius, Madam Web, and three Venom movies (the most recent being Venom: The Last Dance), Sony’s Spider-Man spin-off movie universe comes to an end with Kraven the Hunter. Six films in, and this latest entry – which is now playing in UK and US cinemas – is reportedly the end of the road for this short-lived series which first got off the ground in 2018.
Why is this the end of the Spidey spin-off ‘verse? Because these Spider-Man spin-off films, WHICH DON’T FEATURE SPIDER-MAN(!!), have largely failed to capture the imagination of audiences and Sony is apparently pulling the plug.
Sure, the three Venom films have done fine, but Morbius and Madam Web didn’t set the box-office on fire, and it’s looking like Kraven the Hunter is heading in the same direction too. The movie has already generated a fair amount of negative buzz before it went on general release today, which won’t help it in the long run, and Kraven the Hunter is expected to be the last big flop of 2024.
Not that Kraven the Hunter’s failure hasn’t been signposted for some time. The film has been shuffled around the release schedule four times, while Sony dithered over when to release it, so this should have made it quite clear the film would be pants.
Plus, as mentioned above, this is yet another Spider-man-related movie without involvement from the wall-crawler. And let’s be clear: There is only so long you can drag these things out without Spider-Man.
Anyway, Kraven the Hunter is here now (woo-hoo); J. C. Chandor is the director; and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ariana DeBose, and Russell Crowe are the stars. As for the film, Kraven the Hunter is a comic book movie about the classic Spidey villain of the same name, details Kraven’s origin, and focuses on his relationship with his family.
In the movie, Sergei Kravinoff, aka Kraven, is a hunter with abilities far beyond those of a regular man. He has increased strength, stamina, and agility (as well as the ability to tell if someone has been unfaithful to their wife), and he uses his skills to erm… hunt!
Kraven derived his amazing (and baffling) powers after he was mauled by a lion and saved by a mysterious potion. This all happened when he was a teen, which pretty much put a capper on his already rubbish childhood, and set him off on a path of erm… hunting.
Anyway… family issues, super powers, and reasons never quite justified in the script, lead Kraven to hunt people. This in turn sets him at odds with his dad, and on a collision course with super villain, The Rhino.
Dull, boring, bland, uneventful, uninspiring, lacklustre, pondering, tedious, sedate, arduous, generic, laborious, dreary, meandering, flat, lifeless, and just plain bad, are all words to describe Kraven the Hunter – arguably one of the worst movies to be based on a Marvel Comics character in recent times. The film is slower than Madam Web, even less engaging than Morbius, and offers up no redeeming features.
Actually, scratch that, it has one redeeming feature: Lead star, Aaron Taylor-Johnson. The actor is fine in the film – easily the only bright spot – and with his rippling abs and chiselled features, he is at least convincing as a super-powered character.
But outside of Taylor-Johnson, there is nothing else of any value in this lifeless picture. Nothing whatsoever.
The script is woeful and largely nonsensical; the acting from most of the cast is piss-poor; and the action scenes are run-of-the-mill. The characterisation is pretty much nonexistent; the atmosphere is lacking; and the direction is insipid.
Heck, it even appears as if the costume department took the day off, as most characters seem to wear the same outfits all the way through the movie. There’s certainly nothing memorable or eye-catching on offer, making the whole thing instantly forgettable.
And forgettable is possibly the best way to describe Kraven the Hunter. A film which shoehorns various Spider-Man villains into the story (Kraven, the Chameleon, the Rhino, the Foreigner, etc), yet does nothing of interest with any of them.
In fact, it does nothing of interest in general. The film goes nowhere, does very little, and just seems to exist, moving from one endless scene to the next, with no passion, spunk, or humour.
The most annoying thing about Kraven the Hunter is just how much it wastes Taylor-Johnson. His Kraven would make a decent adversary for Spider-Man, but as a stand-alone story, this just doesn’t work and it all seems rather pointless.
It could have worked, if the script was better, or the direction was stronger, but what’s on offer here is just rubbish. And unfortunately, this has now tainted this iteration of the character.
Sure, I could still watch a Spidey vs. Kraven movie with Taylor-Johnson involved, but any sense of excitement or enthusiasm has sadly evaporated. Plus, don’t ever expect me to go back to this movie to refresh myself on Kraven’s backstory, because I couldn’t put myself through this again.
In fact, why Sony thought a two-hour origin movie was needed for Kraven is anyone’s guess. This could have easily been covered in a two-minute sequence in a Spider-Man film and it would have saved a lot of time and money.
Of course, Sony gave Kraven his own film as part of some grand plan to bring various characters together for a team-up picture later down the line. But that team up picture is looking less likely by the day, and if Kraven the Hunter hasn’t put the final nail in the coffin, I don’t know what else will.
Kraven the Hunter is a complete non-starter. As with many of these non-Spider-Man spin-off movies there’s very little justification for its existence, and unless you really, really, really want to see it, don’t bother.
The film is tiresome and offers nothing in the way of entertainment. It’s slow, drab, and yawn-inducing, and goes nowhere.
In a desire to set-up a Spider-Man Cinematic Universe, after a previous attempt stalled with the ill-received The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014), Sony appears to be fluffing it again. Not that anyone really cares, as no one seemed to be asking for this crap anyway.
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