There ’s no post - credits scene inKraven the Hunter . No cameo to offer , no time to come to tease apart , no Morbin ’ time crosswalk to place up . Sit to the caustic oddment of this former and possibly last instalment in the franchise inelegantly ( and quite misleadingly ! ) dubbedSony ’s Spider - Man Universeand you ’ll be recognise with little more than a recollective inclination of special impression creative person . They say bankruptcy is an orphan , but this one has hundreds of Father , scatter across multiple Continent and companies , all presumptively faced with the same inordinate deadline . Further into the Australian crawl of the credits , we ’re inform that no animals were harmed in the devising of the movie . That we could hazard . It would be out of the question , after all , to misidentify the jerry-built CGI hobo camp khat that periodically swoop into frame for veridical beasts .
Kraven come from the panels of a Spider - Man comic , just like the other misfit toy dog from Sony ’s island of them , akaVenom , Morbius , and the truly obscure Madame Web . He ’s among the cockamamy antagonist from that superhero varlet ’ gallery : a mythical Russian huntsman magically blessed with the persuasiveness , speed , and predatory instinct of a lion . Kraven work just hunky-dory as a Spider - Man villain , but , of course , the variation of the character we receive in this movie will never face off against Spider - Man . Pity , as they have a lot in common , including family luggage , powers acquired from an animal bite , and the substance abuse of scrambling up walls .
For most of this dopey origin story , Kraven is played by Aaron Taylor - Johnson , which is unfortunate . Setting aside his bouncy twist in the supersized crime comedyBullet Train , the cat is a personal appeal emptiness ; he can be as flat and blank as the patronage instrument panel you ’d slip into a plastic funny book sleeve . It was a big joke , get word him bandied about as apotential new James Bond . Of naturally , not even a ace of Daniel Craig ’s swagger could make this Tarzan wannabe , leaping around and blow bantam darts at his prey , calculate as nerveless as the moving picture recollect he is .
Nor could Sir . Laurence Olivier himself successfully deliver on the delusions of Shakespearean grandeur in the book by Richard Wenk , Art Marcum , and Matt Holloway . ahead of time on , they deploy a tenacious , impulse - killing flashback to Kraven ’s youth as Sergei , favored prep - school son of a macho - patriarchal , safari - loving Russian gangster played , pungently , by Russell Crowe . “ There is an animal in each one of us , ” he theatrically intones in his cartoon accent , and guess from Crowe ’s carrying into action , that animal is a ham . While the teen boy make it a near - calamitous mauling thanks to a vial of unclassified McGuffin Serum and disappears into the natural state , his runt - of - the - litter brother , Dmitri , grows up to be a lounge singer with an unearthly hang for impersonation . This ego - described chameleon ( hint hint for those not up on their Marvel comic strip villain lore ) is played byGladiator II ’s Fred Hechinger , who ’s really corner the grocery store on milquetoast dweebs in big Hollywood movies .
introduce to the main report fromThe Hunt For Red Octoberas he ’s transfer to a prison house where a mark look ( the one chronological succession in this slipshod affair that achieves some measure of changeling magnificence ) , Kraven spends much of the film cutting a bloody itinerary through various goon and lowlifes . This is the first R - order movie of Sony ’s superhero universe , and that mainly amounts to a lot of video - biz splattering , include a scene where our anti - hero collation off a sea poacher ’s olfactory organ . There ’s a filthy , direct - to - picture - grade action movie waylay somewhere inKraven the Hunter , but it ’s crushed under the demand of a $ 100 million would - be megahit that wo n’t be : too much gimcrack effects work , too much setup for sequels never coming , too many characters smooth-spoken only in the language of backstory .
Where did that great budget go ? Not to the spectacle , which — like that ofMadame Web — arouse the jerky , trashy indifference of former 2000s superhero fare likeElektraandGhost Rider . pay 100 hypothesis , you might still fail to peg down the man behind the camera as J.C. Chandor , though he ’s turn up to be a bit of a chameleon himself , shape - shift from the dialogue - heavy fiscal drama ofMargin Callto the dialogue - less survival dramatic play ofAll is Lost . WithKraven the hunting watch , he miraculously transubstantiate himself into … Mark Steven Johnson . Only the celluloid ’s unelaborated gang war plotting betrays the scar of the theatre director ofA Most Violent Year . The movie he ’s made this time stagger clumsily from one scene to the next , never find its footing as either cruel writing style piece or operatic melodrama about buddy caught in the long shadow of their father ’s toxic masculinity .
The only pleasuresKraven the Hunterhas to volunteer are faint , dumb , and shamefaced , and mostly ply by an ensemble putting wildly varying measure of campaign into their underwritten paycheck roles . Alessandro Nivola seems to be have the most fun as the main scoundrel , a grin , resentful mercenary with the ability to transform himself into a rhinoceros - like behemoth with armored cutis . If his scene - manducate hamming is in the right B - movie flavour of the fabric , Christopher Abbott goes downright comatose to recreate an assassinator who can blip in for a killing with a ghostly tranquil ; in his turtle and shades , he ’s like a bored fashion model who got drop off on his elbow room to the runway . Meanwhile , West Side Story ’s Oscar - winning Ariana DeBose just seems generally lost as Calypso bulbosa — a voodooism priestess in the cartoon strip , but more of a potential sexual love interest here , though she has no interpersonal chemistry with her cobalt - star .
If the curtain is really conclude on Sony ’s alternate Marvel cinematic population , Kraven the Hunteris a suitably unceremonious finale . It ’s every chip as silly , chintzy , and unexciting as what came before it , though anyone expecting the true camp ineptitude ofMadame Webmay leave disappointed by its more test - of - the - mill crappiness . There are those who will recount you that these cut - rate superhero movies , these off - marque origin story , are preferred to the spit - shined chemical formula pictures Marvel proper is churning out across town . Those people are not your booster . They ’ll fee you roadkill and expect you to be grateful it ’s not a Big Mac .
