Directed by J. C. Chandor, Kraven the Hunter follows Kraven Kravinoff (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), whose complex relationship with his ruthless gangster father, Nikolai (Russell Crowe), starts him down a path of vengeance with brutal consequences, motivating him to become not only the greatest hunter in the world but also one of its most feared.
Sony’s attempt to make its own Marvel spin-off universe of mostly Spider-Man villains without Spider-Man involved has been critically and financially disastrous. Sony had multiple opportunities to create awesome stories with these characters, or even allow the MCU to make use of these characters in their adaptation of Spider-Man, and Sony, in typical fashion, wasted every single one of those opportunities.
Despite having many directors and cast members involved with some of these films their talents are wasted when being paired with horrendous writing or having their visions messed around with by Sony executives who think they have the ability to make an investing cinematic universe on par with the MCU. This has resulted in the straight-up bastardization of several major figures from the pages of Spider-Man comics, going from compelling characters into complete jokes created by corporate morons instead of artistic minds. Kraven the Hunter, one of the most iconic and unique villains from Spider-Man’s rogues gallery, is sadly just another victim of the corporate machine that is Sony’s botched universe.
Much like the previous films of this universe, this film captures nothing about the character or his investing qualities from the source material and feels completely soulless on almost every level. Director J. C. Chandor is known for making some great films in the past but it’s clear that he had zero creative control in this film as this had all the signs of a Sony executive-made product similar to this year’s Madame Web. While I don’t consider this film as horrendous compared to Madame Web it was still a frustrating watch to get through as I saw such immense potential get wasted at every turn.
The cast is full of talented individuals that unfortunately put forth some of the worst acting I’ve seen this year in film. I don’t think this is entirely the fault of the cast members themselves but a majority of them could have at least put forth some kind of effort, even with the shit writing they were given. Aaron Taylor-Johnson has proven many times that he can be a great actor but he was completely miscast as Kraven. Horrible writing aside there is nothing about him that looks or even feels like Kraven, especially with the way he acts. To me, Aaron Taylor-Johnson was just playing himself and not one of the most merciless hunters and killers in comic book history. He doesn’t even try to have a Russian accent for the whole film despite his claims to stay true to the character from the source material who is known to be Russian. And on top of all that he ends up being an incredibly boring lead who failed to hook me with any of his motives despite the film desperately trying to get me to give a shit about him.
The same goes for the rest of the cast including Ariana DeBose as Calypso, Fred Hechinger as Dmitri aka the Chameleon, and Christopher Abbott as the Foreigner. None of them felt like their comic book counterparts nor felt compelling enough on their own as their respective cast members put little to no effort forward into their performances. The only two cast members who felt like they were trying to deliver compelling performances were Russell Crowe as Nikolai Kravinoff and Alessandro Nivola as Aleksei Sytsevich aka Rhino.
Russell Crowe goes all in to command his moments and felt like such a powerful presence throughout the entire film. In fact, he felt and sounded much more like how Kraven actually is in comics than Aaron Taylor-Johnson is. If Russell Crowe had more of the physique that he used to have back in his Gladiator days I think he would’ve made an excellent Kraven.
While Alessandro Nivola’s portrayal of the Rhino is another terrible adaptation of the character, Nivola at least looked like he was having fun giving a humorously sadistic performance even with the poor material he was given. Both of them were by far the best parts of the film but even they weren’t enough to save this film as a whole.
The narrative of this film is honestly boring and lazily put together as it has no emotional core or anything of significant value to offer despite its failed attempts to deliver both. There are certain plot ideas and themes brought up that could have been interesting to explore but the film never does, leaving us with a messy story that is tonally uneven and completely disrespects the characters involved as well as the source material they belong to. The story also felt incredibly rushed and never takes time to develop the characters or explore their motives, and by the end of the film you are left feeling nothing for these characters or their story with all the unfinished plot threads left hanging and a bunch of attempted fan service shoved in at the end to somehow justify its existence.
The narrative and dialogue are as soulless as it gets and the same can unfortunately be said for the technical elements that don’t do this film any favors. For a film that is supposed to be R-rated, it’s the most tame R-rated film I’ve ever seen. I suspect that this film was actually PG-13 to begin and only became R-rated due to the absurd amount of ugly CGI blood, ugly CGI wounds, and horrific ADR swearing that was clearly added in post. The action is fine as it is but was made to look worse with all these effects thrown into it making it a visual eye-sore. The ADR work in this film is not as terrible as that of Madame Web but it’s still painfully bad, especially for one character who has the ability to mimic others’ voices but it is clearly poorly done ADR.
The whole film is honestly difficult to look at with all the ugly as hell CGI littered throughout that clearly had no effort put into it to make it look good, especially for all the scenes involving Kraven’s agility, Rhino’s transformation, and all the various animals that come to help Kraven for unexplained reasons. The film does have decent cinematography and practical sets on occasion but all of it looks bland and devoid of color making this one of the most visually unappealing films I’ve seen this year.
Adding on to bland and ugly visuals is atrocious editing that makes most of this film look like a blur and was obviously done to hide all the horrible effects on display but instead makes them look worse. No one on the technical side of this film gave a shit except for Benjamin Wallfisch who delivers decent music that would have been better off with a better film.
At the time of writing this, Sony has officially pulled the plug on this cinematic universe of theirs, making this film the last installment of the series and honestly, I’m glad that it has finally been ended. Going any further would result in further ruining other iconic characters and infuriate both comic fans and general audiences with passionless garbage that had the potential to be so much more. Don’t bother watching this one in theaters as it is an immense waste of time and contributes nothing meaningful to the comic book genre as a whole. I’m going to give Kraven the Hunter an F = 10.
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