Here it is, ladies and gentlemen, the final nail in the coffin of Sony’s superheroes. Sony knew it, everyone in the world knew it, and so it’s no wonder they’re now putting the lid on this wretched cinematic universe. Under that lid, bottom-dweller Kraven the Hunter climbs wildly upward, to somehow try to be remembered, but the path is impossible. That’s how tired and uninspired this Spider-Man spin-off is, whose sole purpose is to never abandon the Spider-Man license.
This is evident early on, when the film struggles to create the illusion of a plot, and you begin to understand why the film’s premiere has been postponed again and again when you realize how the film will end, five minutes into the beginning of the film. It’s not as incoherent as Madame Web, but it’s told in a sleepy manner. Fragmented. Sloppily assembled. You can almost identify which shooting scenes and dialogue were pasted together to create a better structure, but you can see the cracks in the facade. From the tired dialogue, it seems like the movie should have been released in the early 2000s, along with other failed comic book movies from that era.
Kraven the Hunter is an out-of-print comic page about revenge, about embracing your inner beast, about returning to your roots, as long as you’re a friend of animals it’s okay to kill people, or something like that. I believe. The plot and character motivations are so thin that I don’t blame tired Christmas shopping movie goers for falling asleep here and there, because there never seems to be any real consequences or anything of consequence in this action thriller. That is to say, director JC Chandor can never decide what comic book tone he wants, resulting in an iffy mess that’s mostly ugly to look at. It borders on edgy comical at times, but the whole thing is so ridiculous that you can’t stop smiling.
You can certainly grate cheese on Aaron-Taylor Johnson’s abs, but that’s all the actor has to offer to his role. It’s as lifeless as the film’s stilted action scenes and offers nothing that would make the viewer want to know more about the character or his hobbled past. Kraven is a cheap, disposable action puppet that can be tossed with the popcorn box, because there’s nothing memorable in either the plot or the toothless action scenes, which are mostly just tacky effects from the green screen. I think I feel very sorry for Russell Crowe, who has sunk to this level of rubbish.
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Kraven the Hunter may not be as hilarious as the utterly desperate Madame Web, but he’s not far off, and while Morbius was at least entertaining thanks to its unintentional meme potential, Kraven offers nothing but empty calories. If you want something truly mindless for the holiday season, Kraven can probably come to the rescue, but otherwise put this deformed beast out of its misery.
