the hunter who gets hunted

The requirements comes to the big screen, from the same crooked producers of Venom, Morbius or Madame Web. After many failures, the promise of a violent and nasty supervillain film seemed present. And yet, we once again have a great failure, making this production another jewel in the crown of the worst comic book adaptations!

We naively hoped for a last minute comeback with The requirements. Indeed, where Amy Pascal, Avi Arad and the team of Sony has been surfing the MCU and IP for several years Spider-Manhope seemed possible: we were dismayed by a trilogy Venom veering towards the abysmal turnip and the shameful epilogue, a Morbius incredibly tasteless and a Madame Web in the form of a large turnip.

And while the studio seems to have no understanding of the characters they are playing with or simply the essential ingredients to deliver a successful blockbuster, Kraven emerges as the final nail in the coffin of this “Spider-less Cinematic Universe« .

Naughty devitalized…again!

As a reminder, Kraven is a cult enemy of Peter Parker but also from Black Panther: a super-hunter of Russian origin with superhuman abilities thanks to an African sorcerer. Extremely well represented in the recent Marvel’s Spider-Man 2this supervillain adept with bladed or spiked weapons aims to hunt the most dangerous game on the planet, including superheroes!

But the film adaptation here obviously takes a completely different route, despite the tagline (obviously misleading) based on “We are not born supervillains, we become one!” “. However, the origins of the guy seem curiously respected: Sergei Nikolaievitch Kravinoff (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is the son Nikolaï Kravinoff (Russel Crowe), a mafia oligarch who is fond of hunting and advocates the law of the strongest. Left for dead in his youth due to his father, Sergei finds himself treated for a lion’s bite using voodoo magic..

Now renamed Kraven, the latter strives to use his superhuman faculties (strength, agility, senses and endurance well above average) to track down and kill poachers like his father. His path will not only bring him face to face with his family again, but also in opposition to a gang leader called the Rhino (Alessandro Nivola).

Isn’t my fake fur beautiful?

You will have understood, no supervillain in the making, just an anti-hero doing good but adept at murder to achieve his ends? But where, strictly speaking, the intention could be laudable (while The Penguin proved that we could make an adult drama with real complex characters who are not angels), The requirements strives to distribute each step of the cutesy origin story in a dispassionately orchestrated agenda.

Yet JC Chandor (A Most Violent Year, Triple Frontier) is not a penguin, and this is felt during a few rare, more muscular sequences where Aaron Taylor-Johnson has fun twirling around in front of roughnecks armed to the neck. Arm locks, throat slitting and other neck breaking à la Steven Seagal… in short The requirements sometimes seems to fall into the regressive rejoicing that we likemaking the viewing of the fights rather pleasant given their readability.

Ecology for the teubés

But where is the problem? The result oscillates between polite boredom in the face of a family tragedy without any gravitas, a surprisingly cushy manhunt and superheroic DTV bordering on turbo-nanar! And it is on this last point that The requirements irremediably scores points (and makes it de facto the best film of the batch!), while the resolutely serious tone of the film (and its eco-friendly message sponsored by Basic Fit whey) sometimes leaves room for completely delightful involuntary notes of humor.

In addition to the traditional nods to an already dead extended universe (“he can imitate any voice…he’s a real chameleon!”), the plot is content to make a monumental narrative standstill after having spent 20 minutes drinking ourselves into flashbacks. Point of direct confrontation with the father (Russel Crowe came to collect his check to practice his Russian accent), The requirements has the good idea of ​​letting Alessandro Nivola (A Beautiful Day) cavorting like a fool.

As a result a (super)villain who is both too clean on himself with vengeful motivations as fine as the PQsometimes delivering his lines of dialogue like Tommy Wiseau in The Room : a pure treat of deviance (which paradoxically gives a little life to this mess lit by gray light, by the nevertheless competent op’ director of the Eternals or the Banshees of India) sometimes impeccably transferred to an Aaron Taylor-Johnson sometimes trying his hand at James Bond (a crossbow scene in the middle of the office), sometimes at Stallone (for a less embodied result despite the muscles out).

Freewheel Festival

Even the brilliant Ariana DeBose (West Side Story) seems lost hiding in the role of sidekick lawyer/deus ex machina having read the script (owner of the funniest line in the film!), while The requirements even has fun throwing around an enigmatic alien assassin character like yet another villain to kill. The I-don’t-give-a-fuck is total!

Programmatic soundtrack, production design seeming to come from Romania, issues without emotional significance, corny climax (Abraham Lincoln vampire hunter and its charge of wildebeest is not far) as ugly as the Rhino model. Yet the funniest part of this new failure that is The requirements takes place in its final sequence: between mercantile homage to make the geek froth, respect thrown in the toilet for looted works and absolute non-understanding of the history that they are trying to force us to swallow in a black vise, The requirements is proof that we must stop these soulless shared universes at all costs.

Kraven will be released in theaters on December 18, 2024