In a world of “Venom“ and “Madame Web,” it might seem that Sony Pictures has made enough Spider-Man villain spinoff movies. But, crawling from the grave comes “Kraven the Hunter” to prove you wrong. 

Originally planned to release in Oct. 2023, “Kraven the Hunter” was pushed back to Aug. 2024 due to major backlash the first trailer for the movie suffered. Then, the movie was further pushed back to Dec. 13, 2024. But, were the delays and changes worth the wait, or should the movie have been shelved like the rest of Sony’s Spider-Man villain-verse?

In “Kraven the Hunter,” after a hunt with his father and brother that leaves him in a near-death situation, Sergei Kravinoff decides that he wants to leave his family behind with a newly gained sense of strength and connection to animals. Then, for years, Kravinoff takes on the names of The Hunter and Kraven, who is known to the public as the most fierce hunter on the planet. When a strong threat known as the Rhino gets involved with some family business, Kraven must hunt his biggest threat yet to defend his family.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson stars as Kraven the Hunter, Russell Crowe as Kraven’s father, Nikolai Kravinoff, Fred Hechinger plays Kraven’s brother, Dimitri, Alessandro Nivola plays the Rhino, and Ariana DeBose plays the role of Calypso, a lawyer who was involved with Kraven’s past.

With the reigns of Kraven in the hands of director J.C. Chandor, this film looked to be one of the best films in the Sony Universe to date. Chandor’s track record as a director is critically pleasant, with multiple award nominations from his catalog of films he has directed such as “Margin Call”, “All Is Lost”, and “A Most Violent Year”. Looking at the critical scores of these films gives a nice sense of hope for “Kraven the Hunter,” which takes place in a poorly received franchise.

Along with the Chandor, Taylor-Johnson, the movie’s main star, has a pleasant track record. Taylor-Johnson has starred in movies such as “The Fall Guy,” and “Kick-Ass”, which were generally well-received by audiences. Taylor-Johnson has even proved he is capable of playing a Marvel character before, playing Pietro “Quicksilver” Maximoff in “Avengers: Age of Ultron.” So all factors leading up to “Kraven the Hunter” seem as though the movie would be an easy win for Sony this time around. 

With Sony having flop after flop both financially and critically with releases within this franchise, “Kraven the Hunter” sort of breaks that losing streak. While the film has its problems, it is an enjoyable watch.

Plot

The plot of “Kraven the Hunter” is very standard. There were no plot twists that blew the audience’s minds, and in the movie’s first act, the audience gets a nice sense of where the film is going. It is a very easy-to-understand plot, which is good. This film was not trying to win any Oscars with the story, which is okay. It is just an enjoyable and formulaic plot that does not take a genius to understand.

However, there were a lot of plot holes in the movie that were left unanswered. Characters such as DeBose’s never get a close to their arc. There just happens to be a last scene with them in it, and then they disappear. This does not completely ruin the movie because the characters with plot holes attached are not the main focus of the film but do leave the viewer wondering what happened.

One plot aspect that was bad was the arc and development of a side villain called the Foreigner. The Foreigner was employed by the film’s main villain, the Rhino. In almost every scene that the Foreigner was in, he had to kill someone. Whether it was people that he had a hit against, or someone simply fighting on the same side as him, he had to kill someone in all of his scenes. This was a very annoying plot aspect because the kills felt worthless and not earned.

Action

The action and fight scenes in this film are some of its biggest redeeming features of it. The action in “Kraven the Hunter” is one of the only aspects of the film that can be considered amazing. Kraven mostly partakes in hand-to-hand fistfights in this movie, and the fight scenes look awesome. The scenes are very fast-paced and have intense fights. 

Kraven is also just not held back by a PG-13 rating in this film, so the character is allowed to kill people in brutal ways. In one fight scene, Kraven kills a henchman by using a bear trap on his face, which smashes his head in. This was a really cool kill because it was unique, and the movie was full of unique kills, keeping it entertaining and fun to watch.

Special Effects

The special effects of “Kraven the Hunter” are one of the only elements of this film that are consistently bad. Because of the fact that Kraven hunts animals, there are a lot of animals like tigers and bears in this movie, animals that would be extremely difficult and costly to train for a 30-second fight in the movie. So instead, the studio uses CGI for almost, if not every animal in this film. And every animal in this film looked fake. None of them looked real, down to the point where a lot of the animals looked so fake that they were moving choppily.

Another instance of the horrible visual effects was the Rhino. When a fight between Rhino and Kraven takes place, Rhino is holding Kraven at one point in the fight. Between the bad green screen which affects the setting, to the bad CGI used to fully make Rhino, it looks on screen as though Rhino and Kraven were not actually in the same place shooting the movie, which is not a good look and distracts from the fight going on.

Going along with including a green screen in almost every shot of the film, “Kraven the Hunter” has bad cinematography. A lot of shots are gray and dull in this film. But, coming into an anti-hero supervillain movie, you are not looking for the most beautifully shot movie of the year, so it gets a pass.

Because “Kraven the Hunter” is a film with an R rating, the team behind the movie was allowed to use gore and blood in their action scenes. Kraven does get brutal with some of his kills, but the blood used that is supposed to make the scene disgusting actually ends up making it laughable. The CGI blood used in this film uses the wrong color of blood and after being hit, is delayed ever so slightly that it makes it seem as though the movie has the same graphics as an early “Call of Duty” game.

Acting

The acting in this movie was peculiar; some of the scenes were very selling, and some just seemed like an outright fan film. The main star of the film, Taylor-Johnson, was the best-selling actor in his role. Some of the other actors and characters did not do as good of a job at selling their characters to the audience. For example, in one scene, the Rhino is simply just murmuring to himself and wheezing and making random noises, and then the camera cuts. This scene easily could have been removed from the film, but instead adds a weird scene to the character of the Rhino that Nivola portrays.

On the other hand, when Taylor-Johnson tries his hardest, it is very noticeable. For example, when Kraven is fighting against a group of Rhino’s henchmen while looking for a hostage, Taylor-Johnson does a really good job at portraying the emotion and rage behind finding the hostage. This is where the acting really shines and proves that this film does not fall to the same troubles that “Madame Web” and “Morbius” fall to, showing this film is not all bad.

Most of the scenes in this film with bad acting can be traced back to one big cause; a bad script. Some of the lines in this film were horrible. For example, when shooting a bow and arrow with good aim, DeBose’s character’s explanation for her good aim is strictly, “You’re not the only one with secrets.” If this is not an example of bad dialogue and a bad script, Hollywood has failed.

Faithfulness

The faithfulness to the comics in “Kraven the Hunter” is laughably bad. That is what makes it so divisive though, because it is not afraid to stray out and do its own thing. The Rhino in this film is noticeably different from the Rhino that showed up in “The Amazing Spider-Man 2.” For example, in “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” the Rhino is an escaped convict who uses a high-tech robotic rhino suit to wreak havoc on New York City. In “Kraven the Hunter,” Rhino is a criminal with a health condition that was mutated to make his skin turn rock solid and take the shape of a rhino. 

While these two rhinos are supposed to be the same character, they are portrayed so differently to the point where the Rhino in this film almost feels like a new, original character. Another instance of a character being dramatically different from their comic counterpart is Kraven himself. In the comics, Kraven is a very ruthless fighter who does not care about humanity, certainly not as much as Taylor-Johnson’s version of the character. In the comics and other media, Kraven is also not as charismatic as he was portrayed in this film. This is a very strange change to the character because it would be the equivalent of making Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk be the age of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man and making the Hulk use comedic quips against his villains. A very strange change by Sony, but can be excused because Kraven’s character was interesting.

The final character that should be mentioned with a notable comic counterpart is Kraven’s brother, Dimitri. Dimitri plays a prominent role in the film, and in the comics, Dimitri is famously known as the Chameleon. In this adaptation, however, the Chameleon is only a tease, and Sony only uses Dimitri. This was fine because Sony wanted to make it obvious that Dimitri is the Chameleon, but not quite yet for this movie. There were many lines, such as when Nikolai Kravinoff describes his son’s voice imitations like a chameleon, that let the audience know that Dimitri is the Chameleon. Even at the end of the film, Sony wants the audience to know that if there were to be a sequel, the Chameleon is not out of the picture. This was a fun character to add to give Spider-Man fans an on-screen adaptation to, because the Chameleon had never been portrayed in a movie before, and while it was very subtle and not for long, this movie brings the Chameleon character a little bit of justice.

Spider-Man connections

Of course, because this film is in Sony’s Spider-Man universe without a Spider-Man, it must contain multiple different nods and references to the web-slinger. Just like in Sony’s other Spider-Man spinoffs, this film has its mandatory acknowledgment of the “Daily Bugle,” the news outlet that Spider-Man works for. From the logo being plastered to the side of a bus in “Morbius,” to then having newspaper stands in “Madame Web,” there is a newspaper read by a character in “Kraven the Hunter” that is distributed by the Daily Bugle. 

At this point in time, it is almost annoying seeing the Daily Bugle logo because of how repetitive it is. The Daily Bugle only really works as a gimmick when there is a Spider-Man tied to it, but in this Sony universe, there is no Spider-Man to fulfill these wishes, which eventually leads to a burnout of seeing the Daily Bugle logo in every movie.

Another nod to Spider-Man in “Kraven the Hunter” was a bit more indirect. In a fight scene, Kraven is injected with a poison that is supposed to make him see his biggest fears. Kraven sees a bunch of spiders falling when injected. If not paying super close attention to the movie at this point, this may go over the viewer’s head. But this great fear of spiders is supposed to tease the fact that Spider-Man is Kraven’s biggest threat. But once again, without a Spider-Man to tie this movie into, this tease feels pointless.

“Kraven the Hunter” is a movie that can be enjoyed best when looking for a goofy, bloody action movie inspired by a comic book, scoring 3/5 stars from me.