Kraven the Hunter (2024): The Sonyverse Dies With A Whimper

Kraven The Hunter is the killing blow to Sony's attempt to build a universe out of Spider-Man villains without Spider-Man attached.

It started in 2018 with Venom. The stage was set for a new wave of Sony movies set in the Spider-Man universe that were going to feature his rogues gallery in the protagonist’s chair. The first Venom movie wasn’t great but it was entertaining thanks to Tom Hardy’s performance and made over $850 million at the box office. That spawned Venom: Let There Be Carnage in 2021, which had a higher Rotten Tomatoes score but made only $500 million at the box office. Still a massive profit but the decline is starting to become present. 

 

After Venom came one of the most baffling decisions in this saga, with Morbius in 2022. No amount of memes tricking Sony into rereleasing this movie could save it from bombing critically and at the box office, and at this point, if it wasn’t obvious, the universe’s fatal flaw was uncovered: No one wanted Spider-Man adjacent movies without Spider-Man. 2024 proved this true as Sony released not one, not two, but THREE more of these movies: Madame Web in February, Venom: The Last Dance in October, and the topic of this review Kraven The Hunter in December. All flops with little redeemable qualities, and as I write this, it has already been announced that this phase of Sony movies is dead because of how poorly they were received. It is no wonder as we look closer at the spear through the heart that was Kraven The Hunter.

 

Kraven The Hunter is the origin story for the comic book hunter, as he has to navigate the complicated relationship he has with his mafia father and the turmoil that comes from his dealings. With Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the “world’s greatest hunter”, Russell Crowe as his father, Arianna DeBose as his love interest Calypso, and Fred Hechinger as his brother Dmitri, the only saving graces for this movie are the action sequences, Russell Crowe’s presence, and Taylor-Johnson’s charisma.

 

We were promised bloody fight sequences and I’ll give it to them, they delivered. Kraven doesn’t hold back as he tears through poachers and mercenaries on his way to his ultimate prey. The film gets creative with its combat, as Kraven will stab, shoot, bite, and rip people apart if he needs to. While I didn’t always love his accent, there’s no denying Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s charm and marketability as an action star. He can bring physicality no doubt to his action scenes, but he can also bring a bit of vulnerability to Kraven when he is trying to protect his brother. Russell Crowe was an excellent cast to be the head of a crime family, looking to see which of his sons could be his replacement. He brings such an intimidating aura to the role that I too would be afraid of him if he were my dad. 

 

Aside from those things, however, this movie doesn’t work. One of my biggest pet peeves with recent superhero movies is that they refuse to adapt their genre to fit their character. Every one of these movies has the exact same origin plot where the villain gets their powers and has to take on a different villain of the same cloth as them, just to beat them in the end and become the villain, or anti-hero as these movies want to portray them as, as we’ve always known them to be. They’re all by-the-books quippy action movies that don’t add any spice to their stories. It’s simply boring story-telling. There should be a tragic element to this story as the whole emotional core of this movie is how these two sons are being groomed to replace their drug lord father and neither wants to and resent him, but there really is none of that by the end of the movie. 

 

The writing in this movie is also laughable. While nothing can top Madame Web, lines like “My grandmother died on that trip and I never saw her again.” come pretty close. Ariana DeBose is an Oscar-winning actress and the entire time I saw her on screen I couldn’t help but feel bad for her. I am not an avid comic book reader, but the ones I know and trust have called her Calypso an incredibly confusing character and the story doesn’t go out of its way to make her fit into the story. There isn’t any subtlety to this movie, every thought or feeling a character has, they have to say aloud, less we figure it out through context clues or their acting.

 

Visually, this movie is not appealing. The Rhino, I guess the main antagonist, is a CGI-mess. I don’t know how they can make the Rhino look better in all honesty but I think I much prefer the mech suit Paul Giamatti wore in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 to this mess. I will never like CGI blood, as a horror fan, but it wasn’t that big of a detractor in the grand scheme of things. The animals that will occasionally pop up don’t look great either. 

 

FINAL THOUGHTS

All in all, Kraven The Hunter is at its best a half-baked movie. If you squint you can see the workings of a functional story but the writers put together a basic script that challenged no one. The action is fun but the writing is bad, the story is poor, and there is no reason to stay engaged. Aaron Taylor-Johnson has leading man charisma but it is wasted here, as is the rest of the cast. So as the Sonyverse comes to a sad end, we can only hope they take some time and strategize a new approach, because movies like Kraven The Hunter are not worth the watch. 

1/5

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Connor Jameson
Connor Jamesonhttps://letterboxd.com/cnnrjmsn
I've always been a movie fan, but I first got big into cinema watching Whiplash when I was younger. That movie led to a greater appreciation of films and got me to dive into the medium. My favorite genre is horror movies, but I’ll always have a secret soft spot for rom coms and musicals. When I'm not podcasting or watching movies, I love working out and going hiking, and I currently work in business analytics with the degree I got from Western New England University. MY FAVORITE MOVIES: Good Will Hunting, Spiderman: Into The Spiderverse, Whiplash, Moneyball, Top Gun: Maverick
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It started in 2018 with Venom. The stage was set for a new wave of Sony movies set in the Spider-Man universe that were going to feature his rogues gallery in the protagonist's chair. The first Venom movie wasn’t great but it was entertaining...Kraven the Hunter (2024): The Sonyverse Dies With A Whimper