21 Mar 2025 6 min read Nerdspresso

[Nerdspresso] Don't Hunt Too Hard for Kraven

Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays Kraven.

It’s a tribute to Spider-Man’s enduring popularity that Sony keeps making movies starring only his adversaries. They used to put out Spider-Man movies which actually featured the wall crawler, but that was back when they owned the sole rights to the character.

Now they share him with Disney and Kevin Feige, the grand emperor of the MCU. Don’t get me wrong, I love Tom Holland’s Spidey, but he’s not showing up on the silver screen until mighty Marvel says so. That leaves Sony with few choices if they want to make some bank off the Spiderverse.

They can either bide their time until the next MCU Spidey adventure or try to reap the benefits of turning the characters they do own into boffo box office. But all Sony can get their hands on is Spidey’s Rogue’s Gallery so they continue to pursue the Sisyphean task of turning comic book villains into cinematic antiheroes.

Both the Punisher and Deadpool started out as bad buys in the comics, but their popularity pushed them toward a heroic makeover. I even think Wolverine started out as an antagonist of the Hulk at one point. This switch happens often in comics, but movies are different. Maybe it’s because you can explore a character over multiple issues of a comic book. A superhero movie is only about two hours so there’s only some much room for character development.

I get the appeal of turning the spotlight on the bad guy. Villains are cool. They’re often more interesting than the hero. They get to do things that the good guy can’t do. But villains can’t take center stage. You don’t root for the bad guy to win. They’re there to give the hero someone to defeat.

Villains may propel the narrative but they can’t be the whole story. Whether it’s hubris or desperation, Sony still keeps trying to make movie stars out of Spidey’s bad guys. They have been met with limited success. Tom Hardy’s Venom movies have done okay, but they’re like pouring house brand liquor instead of top shelf MCU.

Taylor-Johnson is very proficient at acting with his abs.

Beyond Venom, most of their latest attempts have tanked hard. Jared Leto as Morbius fell like a lead balloon and Dakota Johnson’s Madame Web was met with a confused yawn. Her movie was the rare case where Sony focused on a minor heroic supporting character instead of a villain, but it was still a Spider-Man movie without Spider-Man.

Now Sony is back for another try at primo superhero cash with Kraven the Hunter, starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson and streaming now on Netflix. Kraven is one of Spidey’s most memorable adversaries. He’s a big game hunter with superpowers who views the wallcrawler as the ultimate prey. He was created in 1964 by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko for The Amazing Spider-Man #15. Bold and brash, Kraven became a recurring villain and a fan favorite.

Kraven first appeared in *The Amazing Spider-Man* #15.

“Kraven’s Last Hunt,” a six-party story by writer J.M. DeMatteis and artist Mike Zeck, was spread over all three Spider-Man titles in late 1987. It’s my favorite comic book tale featuring Kraven the Hunter. In this story, Kraven finally hunts down, shoots, and buries Spider-Man. He then puts on Spidey’s costume and proceeds to brutally pursue criminals throughout the city. Eventually Spider-Man returns to confront him. Turns out, Spidey was only shot with a super potent tranquilizer so he wakes up, digs himself out of his grave, and meets Kraven for a final showdown.

It’s a pretty awesome story and would make one helluva movie, but Sony doesn’t have the rights to that one so they improvised. Their Kraven movie is a generic action flick with some superhero elements. It starts with teen-aged Sergei Kravinoff getting attacked by a lion while on safari with his father and half-brother Dmitri.

“Kraven’s Last Hunt” would have made a far superior movie.

He is saved by Calypso, a girl visiting her mystic grandma in Ghana, with a potion that heals Sergei and gives him animalistic powers. He then runs away from his dad, a Russian underworld figure, and retreats to his deceased mom’s sanctuary in the Russian wilderness. He learns to control his powers and grows up to be the world’s greatest hunter.

Sergei adopts the name Kraven and uses his unique set of skills to hunt down dangerous criminals all over the world as a vigilante for hire. Aaron Taylor-Johnson from Kick Ass, Bullet Train, and The Fall Guy plays Kraven. He makes a decent action hero, proficient with stunts and one-liners, but he is stuck in a ho-hum actioner.

Kraven runs on all fours like a lion with the strength of a grizzly bear and the speed of a cheetah, but he’s basically just Rambo with super powers. There is little to distinguish him from his action movie peers. In this flick, he gets pulled into a mob war between his gangster dad, played with gusto by Oscar winner Russell Crowe, and the mysterious Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola from Jurassic Park III), who is also known as the Rhino.

The Rhino is jealous of Kraven’s elite skincare regimen.

Sytsevich wants to take out Kraven’s dad so he can rule his criminal empire. The Rhino kidnaps Dmitri and Kraven goes on the hunt to save him. He recruits his old savior Calypso, who is now a crusading attorney in London (and played by Ariana DeBose), to use her connections to track down where the Rhino’s goons have taken Dmitri. Anticipating Kraven’s interference, the Rhino hires the Foreigner, an assassin who disorients his prey with hypnotism.

Are you still with me? It’s amazing how with all this intricate set-up, Kraven the Hunter still comes across as so ordinary. Director J.C. Chandor (A Most Violent Year and Triple Frontier) and screenwriters Richard Wenk (The Equalizer movies), Art Marcum and Matt Holloway (Iron Man and Uncharted) have some serious action movie cred between them, so you think they could make this premise pay off.

Unfortunately, Kraven the Hunter is less jungle predator and more sad lion from a roadside zoo. This movie wastes the potential of its able cast. Taylor-Johnson and DeBose (an Oscar winner for Spielberg’s West Side Story remake) simply seem to be biding their time until better work comes along.

Meanwhile Crowe is having a blast as Kraven’s Russian pop, blustering through scenes with an accent so hammy it deserves to be slathered with mustard and served on bread. While Nivola’s interpretation of the Rhino is far more intriguing than Paul Giamatti’s take in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, this classic Spidey villain has yet to truly be appreciated on the big screen.

Russell Crowe’s Russian accent is so hammy that it should be slathered with mustard.

Kraven the Hunter has some guilty pleasure moments, but mostly it plays like one of the ridiculous movies that Taylor-Johnson’s movie star character would have made in The Fall Guy. It’s an over-the-top premise with an underwhelming execution.

Watching Kraven the Hunter feels similar to eating a loaded hamburger that has everything on it but the meat. As the viewer, you’re left wanting more. It’s like watching a TV show set in Gotham City that focuses on the Penguin and not Batman. Who would want to see that?

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