If about ten years ago, when the collaboration between Marvel and Sony to bring Spiderman to the MCU was announced, they would have told me that the only thing Sony would get out of it was the massive grossing of the Spiderman films and the partial success of the Venom films. , I wouldn't have been very surprised. I would have been more surprised to see what the Venom movies were like, I wouldn't have been scared to know that Morbius, Madame Web or Kraven movies had done well at the box office and, what would certainly have surprised me, is that the biggest Sony's success was going to be Miles Morales' Spiderverse, animated films that made it difficult for Pixar to maintain its undisputed crown at the Oscars. And yet, hey, the general view of the Sonyspiderverse is that of a tremendous fiasco, especially because of how hard they tried to set up their parallel universe to the MCU.
But Sony can perfectly handle it, because the overall balance is good. The Spiderman films, whose entire proceeds are collected in exchange for a fixed amount for Marvel Studios, have been increasing their income more and more, with which the failures of Morbius or Madame Web, apart from the hiccups, have more than paid for themselves. They are throwing in the towel now, yes, but they are throwing in the towel with Kraven, a film that has been in pre-production since 2017 and that with this Christmas premiere without major Star Wars or Avatar competitions will surely manage to cushion the blow. I don't know of any comic book fan who would be interested in a solo Kraven movie, that circus character with the Omar Shariff face created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko at a time when almost all of Spider-Man's villains had to do with an animal, so it was logical that Spiderman would end up facing a hunter. Kraven was always one of the most famous villains of the character, but even so among them he was still the worst, being even below Electro. Kraven did not have great stories behind him, and the most important one was Kraven's Last Hunt, too dark and twilight to be adapted as the character's first film. Even so, Sony considered adapting said comic by JM DeMatteis and Mike Zeck at all times, and only decided not to adapt it when the decision was reached that the appropriate thing was to make a first origin film and another with the adaptation, with a presumed appearance in the hypothetical Sinister Six movie and even – those at Sony wildly dreamed – a confrontation between Spiderman and Kraven in one of the wall-crawler's movies. Of course, Marvel Studios refused these things, and although the possibility of Kraven being the antagonist of Raimi's Spiderman 4 and Watts' 3 was initially considered, we have not had a single adaptation of Kraven to the big screen until this same movie. And the movie is… Bad.
Learning nothing at all from the previous fiascos, Sony repeats those same mistakes by showing watered down versions of the comic book characters, showing us a half-baked character for almost the entire movie who ends up being the one we meet in the final scene, villains who are They call like the ones in the comics but with big or small differences that don't quite work. The film, which lasts just over two hours, spends more than an hour creating background for Kraven, his stepbrother, and his father, but at the same time it doesn't tell us much. And surely Sony realized it, because the film begins with a ten-minute action sequence that doesn't have much to do with the main story and then goes on to give us an hour-long flashback to the character's youth, telling us how bad he was. It was about his father, a Russian mobster played by Russel Crowe, who was obsessed with weakness and hunting. Kraven is attacked by a lion that drags him across half a savannah but does not eat him, to end up meeting Calypso, the daughter of two lawyers and granddaughter of a Voodoo sorceress fond of tarot – take the combo – who decides to save his life with a magic potion that his grandmother gave him and that she had made him promise to only use in special situations because it was his family's legacy and I don't know what. And yes, the lion leaves it there for Calypso and leaves without saying anything, because it must have been Kraven's destiny or something. What do I know?
As a result of taking the potion, Kraven gains several superpowers, including not getting blisters when skidding naked on the asphalt, something that got on my nerves every time I saw him during the movie, in addition to super strength, super speed, superhuman resistance and never breaking a bone. Determined to defend the animal world from the excesses of poachers, Kraven settles in eastern Siberia and dedicates himself to that, “hunting humans.” Of course, it doesn't take him long to reunite with his father and stepbrother, as well as two rather funny versions of Spiderman's enemies that have been completely remixed because the people at Sony must not have been very amusing. We have a Rino who carries a backpack with a serum to avoid transforming into Rino and who is the head of a mafia gang that threatens the criminal empire of Kraven's father, as well as a version of the Outsider – that Spiderman villain from the 80s – who It is more interesting than the one in the comic because, after all, the Stranger in the comic was a very good hitman and nothing more, while this one has a power similar to stopping time for about three seconds and it is a curious effect, especially everything when We realize that Aaron Taylor Johnson in the MCU is none other than Mercurio, another who also lives in a world in slow motion.
At this point, you will understand that telling you that the film is not worth it is a huge truism. You already knew that before the film was released, so the confirmation is almost irrelevant. And even so, I'm sorry that Sony isn't going to make more of these attempts, because in a year in which Marvel only had one movie and DC none (well, Joker 2), it was refreshing that Sony had two , even if they were these two atrocities. I stand corrected, Kraven is not atrocious, it is just boring, unnecessary and although it has some well-done action sequences (although some special effects… Ugh, and look, I don't like to talk about these things), we don't see anything in it that can be said which is original. The motivations of the characters are quite weak – characters like Calypso are quite pitiful in that sense – and the dramatic twist at the end of the film seemed silly and ridiculous, while also predictable. And look, in that they have merit, that something seems predictable and at the same time ridiculous, that its ridiculousness does not surprise you because you already expected it, it is something really complicated to do, so hey, long live Kraven.
Don't even bother looking at it.
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