KRAVEN THE HUNTER (2024)

Kraven the Hunter
Directed by J.C. Chandor
Written by Richard Wenk and Art Marcum & Matt Holloway
Starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Russell Crowe, Alessandro Nivola, Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger
Running time 2 hours and 7 minutes
Rated R by the MPA for strong bloody violence, and language
In theaters December 13

by "Doc" Hunter Bush, Staff Writer and Podcast Director

Everyone hoping for a threepeat embarrassing failure like Morbius and Madame Web can put their knives away. Kraven has plenty of knives already.

Drawing on Richard Connell's 1924 short story The Most Dangerous Game-- the ur text for all human-hunting in popular culture-- the comicbook character Kraven was introduced in the early '60s as a villain for Spider-Man. The nepo baby son of a Russian crimelord, the man known as Kraven was a big game hunter who came to New York to hunt Spidey; decidedly a greater challenge than your average man. Over the years, Kraven has died, been resurrected, passed down the mantle to his assorted kids, and occasionally united with heroes against greater threats.

The Sony/Columbia/Marvel version of the character is, much like Venom (and to a lesser extent, Morbius), playing up the character's few moments of vigilante antiheroism. Aaron Taylor-Johnson's Kraven is a man who rejects his father's evil empire, and the assumption that he would one day grow to take it over. He lives alone on some family land in Siberia, keeping his animal friends safe from poachers and occasionally hunting down evil men like his father-- but importantly, NOT his father.

In the sixteen years since he left home, he's gotten in incredible shape, and become a bit of a crime world urban legend: The Hunter. Hmm... a well-traveled rich kid with mommy/daddy damage uses his privilege and fortune to strike fear into the heart of criminals as a mononymed boogeyman... That's correct, studious reader, Sony are trying to have their cake (Spider-Man related audience recognition and draw) and eat it too (but he's Batman).

In their desire to make a more grounded Nolan-like superhero film, they have actually concocted a decent narrative with battling crime families and a good deal of satisfying violence. Dead meat goons are exsanguinated by blades, fall victim to traps and poisons, and one notably gets split in half! There is CGI bloodmist aplenty! Kraven, like a certain bat-themed gentleman, doesn't use guns. He drops a throw-away explanatory line about a true hunter "only using what you were born with", but then constantly uses knives, arrows, and other weapons he was not born with to kill his 'prey'. That self-owning tendency for screenwriters Richard Wenk, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway to try to justify or explain everything is indicative of the big problem with Kraven as a film: it's trying SO HARD that it distracts from the fun you're having.

That's been an issue with all of Sony's non-Venom projects: the movies are so concerned with making the audience take silly stuff seriously, and promising future installments that they fail to properly embrace the silliness and make a truly engaging movie NOW, paradoxically ensuring that these promised future films never get made. Where Kraven stands apart is the movie happening now-- squished in between abundant backstory and a good deal of the aforementioned Sony Franchise Assurance Sickness©-- is actually good. It is at least not bad and it's nowhere near the disasters that Morbius (2022) and Madame Web (2024) were.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson is fun here, and carries the self-seriousness of this character pretty well. This shouldn't be a shock as ATJ has been regularly bringing it for years now, but I was pleasantly surprised by some supporting performances. Russell Crowe is, of course, doing his Russell Crowe thing-- which lately has consisted of being the only man Hollywood thinks can do an accent-- but it works just fine. Fred Hechinger as Kraven's cowering half-brother Dmitri gave me all the enjoyment of twitchy, early Joaquin Phoenix (a good thing); Alessandro Nivola makes a meal and a half out of his nascent crime lord with a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde condition; and Ariana DeBose does a fantastic job making her somewhat under-written occultist/lawyer play as really likable.

Yes, "occultist/lawyer". I told you there was silliness-- it's comicbooks, the silliness is implied!-- but even at Kraven's lowest points, it's just a bit corny. At the high points, it's really fun. ATJ doing parkour down the side of a luxury hotel, or throwing spears through a helicopter, or reading license plates from blocks away using his predator-vision-- like, in the bird of prey sense, not the Predator film series sense, even though that one does have its own famous POV-- it's the kind of cinematic junk food that appeals to me as a fan of genre silliness like Crank 2 (2009) or Face/Off (1997).

Ultimately, Kraven the Hunter is perfectly fine. Good, even. It could be better, but as we are well aware, it could have been SO MUCH worse. In a way, that's the greatest disappointment of the film as an object. Sony have apparently called it quits on their Spider-Man spin-off universe, so their delivering a half-decent offering feels like when your ex gives you a gift they bought before your split. Bittersweet. I'd sure enjoy this a lot more if I didn't know things were over.

Kraven the Hunter is in Theaters Friday, Dec. 13th, 2024

As a silly little bonus thing, here's a drawing I did of Kraven back in 2014: