Kraven the Hunter (2024)

R, and it had every opportunity not to be R.  If I'm going to go off on how Sony is the most studio studio that ever studioed, part of the R rating is part of that.  They amped up the violence a bit and added a couple of f-bombs to attract the Deadpool crowd.  It's such a dumb reason because this is almost a cookie-cutter of every other Sony Spider-Verse project they've made.  Absolutely no reason to be R outside of some desperate attempts to be violent.

DIRECTOR: J.C. Chandor

You guys finally put me over the edge, Sony.  I have been "Team Like-Everything" despite having major problems with the other movies.  My goodness, Sony.  You kind of left it all on the floor for how much trash you could shove into one movie.  I'm the one guy who thought that Madame Web got more hate than it deserved and you still made me mad about Kraven the Hunter?

Here's the thing.  Sony's Spider-Man Universe was a bad idea from the start.  In general, it is really hard to make movies about villains.  They tend not to work, at least not in franchises.  I've pointed this out when Disney did stuff like Maleficent.  To make a movie where the protagonist is the villain of the story, but in a manner where there is action and it is entertaining like the hero's story, you need to make a worse villain.  With stories like these, the villain character that we're all hoping to see over the course of two hours tends to have justifiable reasons for abhorrent behavior.  To do this, you need to introduce people who are worse.  But the point of these stories is to show how messed up the villain protagonist is.  So we now know that the villain protagonist isn't the greatest villain.  We know that they're kind of just a scarier version of a hero.  Like, in no way do I want to see Kraven fight Spider-Man.  It almost makes no sense.  There was this shot of Kraven fearing spiders for no reason, but that doesn't really align with anything else that the story set up.  (If anything, there are a lot of people in Sony's Spider-Man Universe who have an unnatural aversion to spiders as their main motivation to encounter Spider-Man.) 

So what corporate Sony (again, the most studio driven movie conglomerate) does is fundamentally misunderstand what their character is about.  I swear, when all is said and done, Kraven in this movie is more animal-themed Punisher than anything else.  They even went as far as to give him superpowers.  Yes, I know that later in the Spider-Man comics, Kraven mutates himself to give himself an edge on Spider-Man. But the very nature of giving him powers as an origin story misses the point of Kraven altogether.  Let me go off because this is important.  The character of Kraven is someone who can't see the forest for the trees.  In an attempt to gain valor and glory, Sergei Kravinoff hunts creatures that cannot be killed by man.  It's all about hubris.  These are not threats to anyone.  Instead, Kraven thinks of himself as the world's greatest hunter.  As an extension of that thought, he hunts down Spider-Man, a trophy that he considers the alpha predator.  When Spider-Man defeats him (despite Kraven getting some shots in), it's so humiliating because Spider-Man has no interest in killing him.  It's only after multiple defeats that Kraven turns to manipulating his own biology to give himself a leg up on Spider-Man.

You know, villain stuff?

But this is a movie about a fundamentally good kid who was born into a crappy situation.  So he doesn't get sucked into this world of crime and moral depravity, he runs away after being transfused with some tribal and culturally-dubious super soldier serum.  He then uses his abilities as a mercenary to take down bad guys.  While the "being paid to do it" element is a little gross, the villainousness of the whole thing is absent.  If anything, he only hunts bad guys makes him the Punisher.  I mean, the movie starts off with Kraven getting himself thrown into prison so he can take down a mob boss.  That's Frank Castle, guys.  That's his entire playbook.  I have seen that movie.  Man, I don't even like a lot of the Punisher movies and I have to say that Punisher does that move better than Kraven does.

Honestly, Russell Crowe's Nikolai Kravinoff does a better job getting to the root of Kraven than Aaron Taylor-Johnson does.  I know.  You would never watch an aging Russell Crowe (sorry, Mr. Crowe!  I don't want to age shame you whatsoever) tracking down Spider-Men, but the character you are playing is more in line with the character that is supposed to be on screen.  Even the side characters, which are named and have a vague attachment to their comic book counterparts are way off from their basic storylines.  The Rhino is just a mess of a character.  I mean, I'm impressed that he has the Russian name and the Russian accent, but that's the only thing that these two characters have in common.  I know that Miles Warren probably injected rhino DNA into you or something to give you a full on rhino transformation, but that's almost arbitrary.  

I don't love that the Rhino is a mob boss.  There was always something so tragic about the Rhino as a villain before.  Like the Scorpion, these were small time criminals who were paid to honestly mutilate themselves for the sake of powers.  But the Rhino was always a little not smart. He seems like he was tricked into getting this suit grafted onto him and now he would do anything to get out of it.  It's why there are some really lovely Spider-Man comics when Rhino plays a little bit of a grey area villain.  He's a character of regret.  Instead, you missed on Rhino's fundamental emotional core: he's supposed to be stuck in the suit.  In the movie, for most of the film, Aleksei looks human.  His curse is that he wears this backpack that keeps him looking like that.  But that's not the story.  The idea is that the Rhino never has a normal moment whatsoever and that's sad.  

And the bigger issue is the lack of originality in these movies!  Why is it always a mob boss?  What is the Sony Spider-Man Universe's obsession with some big rich guy causing all kinds of problems?  I'm not saying that rich guys aren't terrible and shouldn't be punched.  I'm the last guy who should say that.  I'm saying that there's no attempts to find stories where there's just people trying to have sympathetic storylines.  One thing that Marvel has gotten really good at is making the sympathetic villain.  To a certain extent, had these movies kept going, Dima's Chameleon might have an element of sympathy.  I mean, I have no idea why the character is acting like a villain at the end of the movie.  I wish that there was a throwaway line saying that he kept copying everyone else's behavior until he learned to make it his own.  But that didn't happen. I just made that up on the spot right now.

I hate when my blogs get so complainy.  I want to like stuff.  I enjoy liking stuff.  But there's so much to this movie that is incredibly dumb.  I talked about the origin story of Sergei Kravinoff.  He goes off the grid, becomes Kraven the Hunter, a boogeyman for criminals.  You know, animal Punisher?  Anyway, the funny thing is that it is a huge epiphany for everyone in this movie when they discover that a guy named Sergei Kravinoff is Kraven the Hunter.  No one put that together.  I'm pretty sure that "Kraven" was never supposed to be a secret identity.  I'm pretty sure that it is just...his name.  You know, his name?  Yet, everyone, "Who is Kraven the Hunter?"  "He doesn't exist?"  Yet, Sergei Kravinoff who was really into hunting with his dad arrives into town and people have to do facial recognition matches to prove that Sergei is Kraven?  What is going on with this movie?

I have to keep complaining because this movie is rough.  The movie looks bad.  This might be the first time I mention this point, but all of the Sony Spider-Man movies that don't have Spider-Man in them look bad.  They are all these really safe productions where nothing is all that challenging.  I'm not talking about the CG animals.  I've learned to make my peace with CG animals.  I'd rather that than using actual animals as some form of torture.  No, I'm talking about having a model of visual imagery when it comes to their angsty characters that is so boring and uninspired.  I want people to watch the first episode of Daredevil: Born Again and see what they do with Matt's hearing when he's using it.  It's clever.  It's dynamic and unique.  Then compare that to when Kraven is constantly using his telescopic vision.  

Oh my goodness, I was about to close this blog up without talking about The Foreigner?  What?  He might be the most underbaked villain that I've ever seen.  Listen, I own every Spider-Man comic minus Amazing Fantasy # 15.  I kinda / sorta remember The Foreigner.  But there was no attempt to tell me what allegiance The Foreigner had.  His powers didn't make sense.  Heck, Kraven didn't even beat The Foreigner. He was sucker punched by Calypso, who has no attachment to the character from the book.  Oh my goodness again!  The end?  The reveal that Nikolai was the mastermind behind all of this?  That makes no sense.  It makes no sense.  Honestly, there's no way that was Nikolai's plan.  It took that old trope of making the bad guy someone close to the family and nuking it beyond comprehension.  

Golly, this movie is stupid.  For a guy who tolerated these movies better than most, I hated this film.  I'm glad the SSU is dead.  Normally, I'd be barking for more stuff like this.  I thought that I would rather have less-than-stellar content out there than nothing.  Nope.  Kraven is a hot mess of a movie and I'm glad that my viewing of these movies is done.