The Dark Herald Does Not Recommend: Kraven
Yeah, I can tell you’re surprised.
The Spider-Man-free Spider-Man movies were an idea only a Hollywood producer could love. Certainly, no one else did. As far as I can tell, Amy Pascal knew she was in the process of being fired. She had been caught up in the Sony email scandal saying some excessively honest things about people like Angelina Jolie. That, plus a string of underperforming movies that had her name attached to them had her in Tom Rothman’s gun sights. However, she got lucky when a potential prequel to Spiderman – Venom movie did well enough that it looked (briefly) like she could use the many, many characters locked up by the licensing deal to create a superhero franchise.
It was a stupid idea. Pascal didn’t know anything about Marvel fans and damned if she was going to learn either. There just aren’t that many characters that can function as a lead in the Spiderverse. Miles Morales can do it. Venom can do it. And that’s it. Pascal couldn’t have cared less, these characters were superhero-adjacent, which made them the same as superheroes so far as she was concerned.
If I’m being generous, she may have felt it was worth the gamble from her perspective.
I can say this much for Kraven. It’s better than Madame Web. I can say more, the first eight minutes were actually good. Kraven gets himself sent to a Russian prison to take out his target then he escapes. Sadly, those are the only eight minutes worth watching.
Here you go:
That was it. That was the only good part.
The dialog is terrible, the pacing is glacial, the plotting is whatever needs to happen to get this movie over and done with.
The problem with this movie is that it’s not even funny bad. If I had four beers with a friend and fired up Madame Web we would at least be entertained because it’s funny bad. This isn’t that.
After the first five minutes, we travel back in time fifteen years when the Kravinoff brothers Sergei and Dimitri are at an English boarding school. Their father is a Russian mafia don, he shows up and informs the boys that “their” mother is dead, and they are now going to Africa to kill shit good and get strong.
This is a ridiculous continuity error in the film. Dimitri and Sergei are supposed to be half-brothers in the comics and indeed in this movie. Yet they share the same mother and father? Whatever, clearly Sony stopped caring halfway through the movie.
So Sergei gets bitten by a lion and then gets magic voodoo juice that turns him into Kraven. Dimitri on the other hand is wasted throughout the entire film. In the comics, he’s the Chameleon, a face dancer, here he’s just a mimic until the last five minutes of the movie.
Fast forward and Kraven is now killing bad people because… I don’t know. He just does stuff like that. Rhino has been promoted from thug to rival Russian Mafia don. The Rhino effects were super cheap, you could tell the effects team got told, “Zaslav has slashed the budget. There’s no more money, whatever you’ve got just render it out and we’ll shove it in the film. We literally don’t care what it looks like at this point, just get it done NOW!”
Anyway, Sergei goes to his brother’s birthday party and then Dmitri gets captured by the Rhino
I suppose they had to leave Dimitri as unsuperpowered because he had to spend the rest of the movie being captured whenever he escaped, being able to become anyone might have been a limiter to his ability to be recaptured all the time. Even the movie was embarrassed about it, the last time he’s caught the villains says, “You just can’t catch a break mate.” The movie knew it was being ridiculous. Anyway after stuff that doesn’t matter happens, Kraven kills Rhino and then gets his father eaten by a bear because he’s mean.
He’s bothered by the fact that Dimitri has become the Chameleon now that it doesn’t matter.
Nothing matters in this film. You know I know nothing matters? There was no end-credit scene. I don’t think there has been a Marvel film without an end-credit scene since the first Ironman movie.
The pointless waste of my time known as the Sony Sinister Six movies ended with the sinister three plus Madame Web.
It is over.
It is ended.
The Dark Herald Does Not Recommend Kraven the Hunter (1.3 / 5)
