‘I’ ON CULTURE
The new movie Kraven the Hunter is a perfect example of forgetting art in the hunt for more money. It’s not that it’s an awful movie. It isn’t. It just is not really good. There are a few rousing action scenes, but the whole thing comes off as simply trying to build on the Marvel Universe to make money without paying attention to things like coherent scripts. I didn’t fall asleep; there are more than a few action scenes, but too much doesn’t make sense.
This is a Sony movie, and the only big superhero they have is Spider-Man. As a result, they’ve been doing a series of movies featuring the villains who he’s faced. But by doing origins movies, ones that show how these supervillains get their powers, they have inadvertently made them into heroes. The Venom movies at least were sort of funny, particularly the first one. Morbius and Madame Web were duds. And Kraven, who in the Marvel Universe, is considered a really nasty animal hunter who switches to the “most dangerous game,” though working to kill people in “honorable” ways. In this film, he merely kills a lot of really bad guys.
The opening shows Kraven (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) being escorted into a nasty Russian prison. His insane roommate tells him he won’t last a month. Kraven replies that he’ll be there no more than three days. And he uses that time to kill a terrible criminal and his henchmen, and then escape through a series of improbable leaps and climbs. He disappears into the icy storm, walking into a plane ready to take him away. This is by far the best part of the entire movie.
We then go through an overly long flashback to young Sergei Kravinoff’s life when he and his brother are abused by their drug-kingpin father (Russell Crowe), who pushes them to hunt. Young Sergei (Levi Miller), who becomes Kraven, doesn’t shoot at a lion, is attacked when his father shoots it, and, as he lies, dying, the lion’s blood splashes into his own. Voodoo priestess Calypso (Ariana DeBose), at that point a teen, cures him with a potion. He is then joined with the lion and has enormous strength and leaping ability.
We later see him wiping out hunters who kill for sport, generally using his hands and knives instead of guns. This is a change. Instead of being a crazed big-game hunter, he now defends the animals. I am certain that makes PETA happy, but it does little to make him into a super-villain. Things get more convoluted as he winds up in London where his brother (Fred Hechinger) is a singer in a restaurant owned by their father. A rival drug dealer, Rhino (Alessandro Nivola), another super-villain with a murky backstory, kidnaps the brother and the chase is on. There is also another killer (Christopher Abbott), who can hypnotize people into not seeing him. There are many plot twists along the way that might have seemed brilliant to someone but really don’t work.
First of all, the computer graphics, used for the wild animals and Rhino when he sort of “Hulks up” are not very good. They might be OK on the Cartoon Network, but not in a top movie. Second, Kraven is supposed to be a Spider-Man villain, but except for knowing his mother was freaked about spiders, and he is attacked by some for about a minute, there is no connection. Third, most of the one-liners, usually so great in these films, go nowhere. I mean, “My grandmother was killed on that expedition. I never saw her again,” is simply strange. Fourth, some surprises are quick and meaningless in the film. Last, Kraven is supposed to be really cruel, actually the only true human going against our beloved Spider-Man, but instead here is a really intense environmentalist who improves the earth by getting rid of nasty people.
Yes, there are some good action bits, particularly the opening, as well as some short bits until an overlong ending, but the film still drags. None of the actors give a particularly good performance, but then again with this script, that probably was not possible.
I would guess this will be on television very shortly. If you can get a group of people together and can only pay under $5 total to see it, you might consider it an even deal.