Kraven the Hunter

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Kraven the Hunter
There's a film going round, ruining his name...
Directed by: J. C. Chandor Produced by: Avi Arad Matt Tolmach David Householter Written by: Richard Wenk Art Marcum Matt Holloway Based on: Marvel Comics Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson Ariana DeBose Fred Hechinger Alessandro Nivola Christopher Abbott Russell Crowe Cinematography: Ben Davis Editing: Chris Lebenzon Craig Wood Music by: Benjamin Wallfisch Evgueni Galperine Sacha Galperine Production company: Columbia Pictures Marvel Entertainment TSG Entertainment II Arad Productions Matt Tolmach Productions Distributed by: Sony Pictures Releasing Release date: December 13, 2024 Runtime: 127 minutes Country: United States Language: English Budget: $110–$130 million Box office: $26 million Prequel: Venom: The Last Dance (Sony's Spider-Man Universe films)

Kraven the Hunter is a 2024 American film featuring the Marvel Comics character of the same name, starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the titular character alongside Ariana DeBose; produced by Columbia Pictures in association with Marvel Entertainment, it serves as the fallow-up to Venom: The Last Dance and is it the sixth installment in Sony's Spider-Man Universe, as well as so-far the final film of the Sony's Spider-Man Universe. While the film's box office money hasn't been great, Kraven the Hunter's actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson has expressed interest in reprising his role in a potential Sinister Six movie.

Plot

Kraven's complex relationship with his ruthless father starts him down a path of vengeance, motivating him to become not only the greatest hunter in the world but also one of its most feared.

Why It Should Be Hunted Down

1. Very similar to Morbius and Madame Web, the pacing is dreadful, with most of the scenes dragging on for way too long and makes it feel like barely anything is happening in the film. This can also make the audience feel bored and cause them to leave the theater after a few minutes of watching the film.
   • Very infamously, the first quarter of the movie is entirely the origin of Kraven.
2. Terrible release date: This film came out a week before Mufasa: The Lion King, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and two weeks before Nosferatu (which ironically Kraven the Hunter and Nosferatu came out in 2024, both have Aaron Taylor-Johnson in it, and both movies came out in December 2024), after a mammoth amount of delays that date all the way back to January of 2023.
3. This film made the questionable choice of making Kraven an anti-hero instead of a villain; while Venom and Morbius were anti-heroes in the comics, and Madam Web is both a hero and allie of Spider-Man, Kraven the Hunter was always a villain, with the most well-known and recent depiction of that being 2023's Marvel's Spider-Man 2.
4. Awful CGI, especially when it comes to the Rhino.
5. There's also a non-sensical moment to connect it with the Spider-Man mythos by revealing that Kraven's greatest fear is spiders, which means that he will face Spider-Man because he fears his spider logo.
6. Executive meddling: Initially, Marvel wanted to introduce Kraven in 2021's Spider-Man: No-Way Home, but Sony, because of the fact that they own the rights to the character, wanted to introduce him in his standalone movie, and as a result, that made him "unavailable" for Spider-Man: No-Way Home; essentially, they wanted to establish Kraven in his own film before incorporating him into a larger Spider-Man crossover. In what an article on Screen Rant says "Unfortunately, Coogler couldn't bring Kraven into his film, either due to a conflict of rights with Sony or perhaps because Marvel had plans to introduce him in a Tom Holland Spider-Man film later on."
7. It ended Columbia Pictures’ 100th anniversary on an abysmal note.
8. This film was also so bad that as of 2025, it basically killed the film series of the Sony's Spider-Man Universe.

Gloriful Qualities

1. The film is rated R, which is perfect considering that the Venom films and Morbius were rated PG-13.
2. The Foreigner, a Spider-Man villain that has not yet been used in any Spider-Man media, makes its debut here.
3. The action scenes can be entertaining to watch.
4. The performances are generally good, with Aaron Taylor Johnson giving his all as Kraven.
5. The lighting is gorgeous and a massive upgrade from Madame Web, even this is the case with most modern movies, as you can see how bright the movie is and the colors are not over-saturated, and you can tell that Sony put a lot of effort and light into the film's lighting by making it as bright as it can be, which actually does say a lot for Kraven the Hunter.
6. The concept of a Kraven the Hunter movie can still be interesting, despite the pretty bad execution here, and would have been way better had the film not been delayed and had better writing.
7. In all fairness, this film is a slight improvement over Madame Web and Morbius, but that still pales in comparison to the Venom films.
8. The posters can be very great to see look at and can be seen as eye candy, especially with the colors that the posters have.

Reception

The film received overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 17% of 142 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4/10. The website's consensus reads: "Claiming no trophies with its rote story and shoddy special effects, Kraven the Hunter turns out to be a paper tiger." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 35 out of 100, based on 41 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale, while those polled by PostTrak gave it a 59% overall positive score.

Lyvie Scott of Inverse wrote, "A clunky, crowded script, muddy visual effects, and glaringly obvious ADR bog down a promising premise. It's not camp enough to become a cult classic, and it lacks the conviction to carry its most ambitious ideas to the finish line." The Daily Telegraph's Tim Robey gave it one out of five stars, writing, "Last orders can't come soon enough for the whole parade of supervillains, superheroes, or however they're now choosing to identify. This is rock bottom."

Ian Freer of Empire gave it two out of five stars, writing, "This all feels a long way from Chandor's glory days of Margin Call and All Is Lost. Save the occasional flourish, Kraven the Hunter is limp, tired, uninvolving superhero fare." Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian also gave it 2 out of 5 stars, saying that Chandor "does a serviceable job, but the delirious craziness that once made the superhero genre so watchable is not really in evidence. Kraven is a so-so character in a so-so film and the superhero revival is as far away as ever." The Hindu's Gopinath Rajendran wrote, "Not only is the wafer-thin plot painfully predictable but the secondary characters, despite being played by able performers, such [sic] Academy Award-winner Ariana DeBose, are reduced to one-dimensional muppets who add little to the overall narrative."

The A.V. Club's Jesse Hassenger gave the film a B- grade, writing, "while all of the previous movies in this barely-series seemed scrambled together in a panic, Chandor's movie seems scrambled together with a great deal of confidence and a bit of style." Adam Graham of The Detroit News said the film "is far from the cream of the crop in the superhero space, but non-discerning comic book fans may appreciate the spoils of this bounty" and gave it a C+ grade. Kevin Maher of The Times gave it three out of five stars, saying it "remains ludicrous to the end but it's never anything less than entertaining."

Future

Chandor was open to making a second and final film featuring the character, based on Kraven's Last Hunt and setting Kraven against Spider-Man. "It's obviously very tragic and sad… but the character we're trying to create is one who could realistically, if this film is a success, end with Last Hunt. Similarly, Taylor-Johnson expressed interest in a Sinister Six crossover film. In December 2024, following the film's projected financial failure, it was reported that Kraven would be the final film in Sony's Spider-Man Universe, ending any chance for a sequel or crossover, with a later report from Variety specifically clarifying Kraven to be the last non-Venom film in the franchise as of now.

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