I had pretty low expectations going into Kraven the Hunter and while I did not hate the movie, I would say that it is right on par with what you would expect from Sony’s non Spider-Man, Spider-Man villain cinematic universe. From what has been revealed and from what happened during the credits it does appear that this is the end of whatever it is that Sony was trying to do here with these villains turned anti-hero movies.
How to Download Kraven the Hunter
Kraven the Hunter was released on December 13, 2024. You can expect it to become available for download or streaming on digital platforms in 2-3 months from this date. Click on the Download button at the end of this review and check the current availability.
The Movie Review
I did not hate Madame Web and Morbius like a lot of people did, hey I am not saying that they were great, but I have certainly seen far worse. Out of the three Venom movies, I liked the second one, hated the first and to be honest, I could take or leave Venom: The Last Dance. I personally hope that this is the end of this weird thing that Sony was doing and if they want to have Spider-Man villains, they will have them fighting Spider-Man!
I am not even sure where I want to start with this, to be honest with you. A huge problem that Kraven the Hunter has is that last year we got Spider-Man 2 for PlayStation 5 and Kraven in that game was awesome and so much better than the Kraven we get here. To be fair, Aaron Taylor Johnson (check him out as Pietro Maximoff in Captain America: The Winter Soldier or Avengers: Age of Ultron or as Ives in Tenet) not bad in the role at all, he looks pretty badass when he is in the full Kraven costume and he has a presence about him
It is like they just tried to throw everything against the wall in the hopes that something would stick here. The basics are that Kraven is a hunter and a family member is kidnapped so he makes a hunting list of people he needs to track down to get them back. We get a bit of story with the relationship he has with his father, but this is kind of put on the back burner as Kraven starts making his way through his list.
The best part of the movie for me was Alessandro Nivola as Rhino. Rhino looks awesome and you can tell that Alessandro Novo was having a blast playing this role. He really goes all in with it, but as cool as it was seeing Rhino look like this on the big screen, I am not sure it was worth waiting for. I would have much rather seen Spider-Man fight this incarnation of Rhino than Kraven.
We also get a few other characters, one of which is Kraven/Sergi’s brother, no spoilers here, but if you know, you know and that is kind of cool, although it never went anywhere. We get a few other Marvel characters too which on paper sounds cool, but the execution is so weird. The Foreigner for example has a strange hypnotism power. The worst though is Ariana DeBose’s Calypso who is just awful in every regard. Her performance is like she does not want to be there and there is something weird with the dubbing as well as it looks super off when she talks.
There are some cool action scenes in Kraven the Hunter and to be fair, when the movie started I actually thought this could be pretty cool. However, it just feels like all the other non Spider-Man, Spider-Man movies that Sony has made over the last few years. Also, I did not think the CGI was terrible either, it actually looked really well done in some places and there are some pretty action packed scenes that happen in full daylight so that was cool.
If you ask me, when Sony made that first Venom movie and it was a huge hit without Spider-Man they thought that they could do what they wanted with Spider-Man’s rogues gallery and it just did not work. For me personally, I would put Kraven the Hunter in between Morbius and Madame Web. I did not hate it, but I certainly did not love it either, I am very interested to see how this plays out at the box office as I have a feeling it is not going to do all that well.
