From August 2017 – January 2020, Keith R.A. DeCandido took a weekly look at every live-action movie based on a superhero comic that had been made to date in the Superhero Movie Rewatch. He’s periodically revisited the feature to look back at new releases, as well as a few he missed the first time through.
Like many of Spider-Man’s classic villains, Kraven the Hunter was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, first appearing in Amazing Spider-Man #15 in 1964. Kraven was established there as a big-game hunter of a type that was a lot more common in the twentieth century than the twenty-first. This being a superhero comic, Kraven was also super-strong, having drunk a potion from “the witch-doctor of a hidden African tribe.”
He’s first pitted against Spider-Man by the Chameleon, who is later retconned as Kraven’s half-brother. Having been defeated by the wall-crawler in the very first issue of his comic book, Chameleon brings in Kraven to try to take him down. Kraven continues to view Spider-Man as the greatest hunt of his career, using his superior strength, various exotic potions, and his raw fighting ability to challenge Spidey.
The definitive Kraven story was 1987’s “Kraven’s Last Hunt” by J.M. DeMatteis, Mike Zeck, and Bob McLeod, a six-part story that ran through all three of Spidey’s titles at the time, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Spectacular Spider-Man, and Web of Spider-Man. The story established Kraven’s real name as Sergei Kravinoff, and his background as the scion of Russian aristocracy who had to flee Russia when the Communists took over in 1917; they emigrated to the U.S., where they lived in poverty, his mother eventually took her own life. Kravinoff took to hunting, finding honor in the jungle that he felt had been lost in so-called civilization.
“Kraven’s Last Hunt” ended with Kraven’s suicide. Several members of his family took on the mantle of Kraven the Hunter after that, and then Kravinoff was resurrected, finding that he’s only able to die if Spider-Man kills him. He was also retconned into a 1950s Avengers team formed by Nick Fury.
Amusingly, the character became much more popular after his death, which is why he kept being resurrected. Sam Raimi had been considering Kraven as the villain of Spider-Man 4 before that movie was shelved in favor of a reboot. Ryan Coogler had wanted to use Kraven in Black Panther, but couldn’t secure the rights, as Spider-characters are controlled by Sony rather than Marvel Studios.
As part of their ongoing attempt at a Spider-Man Cinematic Universe Without The Actual Spider-Man, Sony developed a Kraven movie, hiring Richard Wenk to write the screenplay. Aaron Taylor-Johnson secured the title role, having impressed the producers with his work on Bullet Train. Taylor-Johnson has previously been seen in this rewatch as Quicksilver in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Avengers: Age of Ultron, in the title role in both Kick–Ass movies, and in The King’s Man. Rounding out the cast are Ariana DeBose as Calypso (a voodoo priestess in the comics; a corporate lawyer here, though with Vodou in her background), Fred Hechinger as Dmitri Kravinoff (a.k.a. the Chameleon), Alessandro Nivola as Aleksei Sytsevich (a.k.a. the Rhino, a version of the character previously seen in The Amazing Spider-Man 2), Christopher Abbott as the Foreigner (a version of an assassin from the comics), Levi Miller and Billy Barratt as the teenaged versions of Sergei and Dmitri, and Russell Crowe as Sergei and Dmitri’s father Nikolai (Crowe was previously seen in this rewatch in Thor: Love and Thunder).
While the film set the stage for a sequel that would pit brother against brother, the movie tanked like a big giant tanking thing, and proved to be the death knell for Sony’s Spider-Man Cinematic Universe Without The Actual Spider-Man, as no more films are planned in this attempt at a universe. Which isn’t really a surprise, since only the Venom films performed well…
Kraven the Hunter
Written by Richard Wenk and Art Marcum & Matt Holloway
Directed by J.C. Chandor
Produced by Avi Arad, Matt Tolmach, David Householter
Original release date: December 13, 2024
“It’s called karma—she catches up to you”
We open in Siberia on a bus that is taking prisoners to a penitentiary in the middle of nowhere. They stop at a gas station so the inmates can use the bathroom. One inmate wanders over to the other side of the building, and is grabbed and put back on the bus. The prisoner is processed and roomed with a large man who says he hates roommates. The previous one only lasted a couple months. The new prisoner says he’ll be there three days, tops.
Soon enough, he pisses off two guys in the yard, and makes idiots of them—while showing superior strength—and is then taken to the cell of Semyon Chorney, a crime lord who still rules his criminal empire from prison. The new prisoner identifies himself as Kraven the Hunter and kills Chorney and his bodyguards, as well as the guard. He escapes—while his erstwhile roommate cheers him on from their cell—and flies off. He wipes the tattoo off his neck. The next morning, Russian authorities find the real prisoner with that same tattoo dead at the gas station.
We then flash back 16 years. Half-brothers Sergei and Dmitri Kravinoff are taken out of their private school in New York by their father Nikolai, who tells them that Sergei’s mother—who raised them both, even though Dmitri was the product of an illicit liaison on the part of Nikolai—has died, having died by suicide in an insane asylum.
Nikolai thinks the appropriate way to commemorate this loss is to go on a hunt for a giant lion known as Zar. The Kravinoffs hunt around Africa, along with some friends of Nikolai, and a businessman named Aleksei Sytsevich. The latter attempts to make a business deal with Nikolai, who blows him off with impressive rudeness.
Nearby, a teenage girl named Calypso is playing with her grandmother’s Tarot deck. The cards she turns over indicates that something important will happen, so Grandma gives her a potion that’s been part of their family for many generations. It can heal, but it can also do far more than that.
Sergei and Dmitri go off on their own and encounter Zar. Sergei refrains from shooting the lion, but Nikolai does shoot the beast, at which point it attacks Sergei and carries him off. Calypso runs away from her parents (who are taking pictures of a giraffe), and finds Sergei lying bloody on the ground. The lion doesn’t kill Sergei, but instead wanders off, and Calypso gives Sergei the potion, as well as leaving one of the Tarot cards with him.
Sergei is brought to a hospital where he’s declared dead—and then revives. Nikolai takes him out of the hospital against medical advice, and they return to the family mansion. Sergei feels invigorated and more attached to nature—and also wants to get the hell away from his father, refusing his offer to be the person who takes over his businesses. Dmitri isn’t happy that his brother is leaving, but Sergei feels he must.
Back to the present: Sergei takes on some poachers. He kills four of them, and notes the license plate of the other two who run away very fast. He tracks them to London, where he has already killed their employer. Said employer’s ledger gives Sergei some more people for his list.
He then approaches Calypso, who has grown up to become a corporate lawyer. Sergei explains that he’s the mythical “Hunter” who goes around killing criminals. He killed Chorney specifically because the crime lord killed a friend of Calypso’s, and he is returning the favor. He proposes a partnership, which she says she’ll think about.
Sytsevich makes a play to take over Chorney’s operation. He also reveals that when he removes an IV from a port in his side, his skin turns rock hard, which is why he now has the nickname “the Rhino.” Sytsevich also acquires a video from the prison of Chorney’s murderer, who is identified as Sergei Kravinoff.
Sergei goes back to the family home for Dmitri’s birthday. They celebrate, an evening that ends with Dmitri passed out drunk and Sergei putting him to bed. Restless, Sergei goes out, and when he comes home at dawn, Dmitri is gone, having been kidnapped. Sergei chases down the SUV that the kidnappers are using, and then almost takes down the helicopter that the kidnappers use to escape with Dmitri. Despite heroic efforts by Sergei to stop them, they get away.
Sergei goes to Calypso, asking for her help in tracking down the kidnappers. He provides enough of a description that Calypso is able to get the information from one of her sources that the mercenaries took Dmitri to a Turkish monastery.
However, that source is feeding her false information, as said source has been suborned by the Foreigner, an assassin who’s been hired by Sytsevich, and who has a personal animus against the Hunter for killing his mentor. Sytsevich is the one who had Dmitri kidnapped, as he wants revenge against the Kravinoffs for mistreating him all those years ago, and also wants to make a play for Nikolai’s criminal empire.
Sergei goes to the Turkish monastery, only to discover that it’s a trap. He survives the trap—which is more than can be said for the mercenaries. The Foreigner goes to the monastery and finds an exotic plant on the mercenary corpses that can only be found in one particular region. The Foreigner shares this with the Rhino, and the pair of them take some soldiers to chase down Sergei.
Meantime, Sergei has warned Calypso about the trap, and she is barely able to get away from some thugs who show up at her law firm. She joins Sergei at his remote redoubt, which is on some land owned by his mother.
Sytsevich and the Foreigner arrive. The Foreigner has a neurotoxin that will given Sergei hallucinations. This, combined with the Foreigner’s bizarre hypnotism, leaves Sergei at the Foreigner’s mercy. But then Calypso shoots him in the head with a crossbow, and then administers more of her original potion to Sergei. Thus healed, Sergei takes on Sytsevich, who removes his IV and goes full Rhino. However, Sergei is able to stop him by first stabbing him in the port for the IV, and then lassoing him to a stampeding buffalo, which results in his being trampled.
Dmitri is rescued, and Sergei figures out that Nikolai is the one who sent Sytsevich the video. After Sergei tracks Nikolai to a hunting spot, his father admits that he knew Sytsevich was going after him, and he knew that Sergei would never take Sytsevich on for Nikolai’s sake, but he would for his brother. Disgusted at being manipulated, Sergei sets his father up to be killed by a bear.
One year later, Sergei visits Dmitri on his birthday, only to discover that his brother dismantled Nikolai’s criminal empire, but is now running it. Plus he went to the same doctor that Sytsevich went to, and now he can change his face, transforming at will, which—combined with his innate talent for vocal mimicry—means he can pretend to be anyone.
Going back to the Kravinoff mansion, Sergei finds a present from his late father: a vest made from the pelt of Zar the lion. He puts it on, finally looking like the comic book version of Kraven the Hunter just in time for the movie to end.
“When do we get to the part where I give a shit?”
There’s a lot that’s unfortunate about this movie, but probably the worst is that it would be a much better and more interesting movie if it didn’t have any connection to Marvel Comics. The script would make a decent crime thriller about the son of a gangster who becomes a vigilante, and then gets caught in a gang war with his half-brother in the middle.
Unfortunately, by sledgehammering the comic-book elements, it winds up being neither fish nor fowl. Every single character is either (a) less interesting than their four-color counterpart, (b) completely changed from their four-color counterpart, or (c) both.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson throws himself into the part, at least, having apparently gone to great lengths to get in six-pack-abs shape for the role. But he doesn’t have the operatic bombast of the comics character—plus his accents are all over the place. (His American accent is very mannered, and his Russian dialogue is too heavily accented to be convincing as a native speaker.) He plays the role way too straight, too laconic, too serious. On several occasions, he’s referred to as a lunatic (particularly by Calypso), but that description doesn’t track with how Taylor-Johnson is playing the role at all.
Russell Crowe’s accent is more consistent, but isn’t actually good. The comedy accent he put on to play Zeus in Thor: Love and Thunder worked for that part in that movie; the comedy accent he uses in this film, not so much.
Kraven’s origin story is laughably ridiculous. Calypso wanders off from her parents while in the middle of the veldt, then feeds the super-powerful potion to some random dude who’s been mauled by a lion, and doesn’t even hang around to find out what happened to him—all this for absolutely no discernible reason except that it’s in the script.
I will give Alessandro Nivola credit—he does a fine job as the charismatic criminal Sytsevich. As the Rhino, he’s pretty nowhere, and the climactic battle with him as a CGI monster for Kraven to fight is incredibly anticlimactic.
In the end, this is the latest in a series of lackadaisical films vomited forth by Sony in an attempt to create a cinematic universe without the character that makes the universe work, or make sense in any way. Indeed, Kraven was always at his most interesting when treating Spider-Man as the most dangerous game for him to be hunting, a dance between the two that came to a magnificent climax in the “Kraven’s Last Hunt” storyline. Without that particular prey for Kraven to go after, the movie suffers mightily. It’s not really a surprise that it was the final nail in the coffin of the Spider-Man Cinematic Universe Without The Actual Spider-Man.
Next week: Sam Wilson’s first time starring in a movie as Captain America, as we look at Brave New World.
No comments about the ridiculous amount of ADR to patch together the reshoots and edits to the plot? The back of DeBose’s head should get a bonus for how often they use it to cover the new dialogue. This was a movie that was made by focus groups after the fact during an era of super hero fatigue and a studio that just wanted something to franchise.
I was also thinking about how there was no comments about the absolutely terrible CGI. It was so bad that I turned the movie off after 45 minutes. It was about as bad as the Scorpion King in the Mummy 2.
And then combining the problem of new dialogue and really bad CGI is the CGI Calypso mouth!
I honestly didn’t even notice the ADR issues, which is an additional point against this very lackluster film.
As for the CGI, having grown up watching the original StarTrek and the Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker eras of Doctor Who, mediocre CGI doesn’t even register unless it actively interferes with the story or the setting or some such. For example, the crappy CGI of the title character in the 2003 Hulk bothered me because it didn’t convey the jade giant’s mass at all, so I never believed it was the Hulk. But the contemporary films starring Spider-Man and Daredevil weren’t a problem because they’re light, acrobatic characters, so the lack of substance was less of an issue.
The bad SFX here just rolled off my back, as it were. Not even worth mentioning because it didn’t affect the story, which is all that matters.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
That’s interesting, because when Ang Lee did the performance capture for the Hulk (literally — he acted it out himself), he wore a foam muscle suit to give him the Hulk’s proportions and slow down his movements so they’d fit the character better. But I guess that wouldn’t matter much in animating Hulk leaps or the like.
By contrast, I found the CGI of Ebon Moss-Bachrach as the Thing in The Fantastic Four: First Steps very unconvincing, because he moved with the speed and lightness of a man the size and weight of Ebon Moss-Bachrach rather than that of a towering rock man. (And I’m impressed with myself that I remembered how to spell “Ebon Moss-Bachrach.”)
There’s a lot that’s unfortunate about this movie…
Not least the fact it never explains what a herd of African Cape Buffalo are doing in Russia!
I have to be honest though, the plot summary isn’t all that bad as far as super hero movies go. I would want to see the movie described, even with some pretty bad plot holes. Shame that it apparently doesn’t work on the screen.
I agree – reading the summary I was like, huh this actually sounds pretty cool and he makes an interesting hero. I of course have zero connection to Kraven the Hunter – so this may very well as the OP says have worked better as an independent IP. People really should make new IP more and not just really on old connections – sigh.
That’s my feeling – that it’s basically an actually pretty decent story that lacks in the execution.
Recently, I’ve been finally watching the 1994 Spider-Man Animated Series (a bit late, for sure). I really enjoyed their take on Kraven and his tragic love story with Mariah Crawford. while treading the line between him being a threat to Spider-Man and then becoming an unlikely ally in the Neogenic Nightmare arc. That version, simple as it is, is a lot more interesting than what we get here.
A gangster story needs time. Time to develop. Time to breathe. This film had neither the necessary development period, nor remotely the ideal runtime. This is a rush-job made to hold on to the license. And it suffers from pretty much the same issues as Morbius and Madame Web: lack of focus. I haven’t seen Chandor’s other work, but I’m assuming he had little say over the final result.