Kraven the Hunter
screenplay by Writers: Richard Wenk, Art Marcum, Matt Holloway
Director: J.C. Chandor
Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger
Publisher: Sony Pictures Releasing
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Rating: 3 Stars (6 stars on IMDB)
Review by Dicentra

Kraven’s complex relationship with his ruthless father, Nikolai Kravinoff, starts him down a path of vengeance with brutal consequences, motivating him to become not only the greatest hunter in the world, but also one of its most feared.

As a fan of the nineties Spiderman cartoons, I’ve always enjoyed Kraven the Hunter’s character. Knowing that he was getting his own live action movie (along with the remote possibility of a Sinister Six movie), I was very excited. However, the movie didn’t quite fully live up to the expectations I had going in.

While Kraven the Hunter appears on occasion as an adversary of Spider Man, I don’t ever recall the cartoons going into depth on how Sergei Kravinoff (Taylor-Johnson) became Kraven the Hunter. I really enjoyed getting to learn about his origins, how he got his powers and how he became the supervillain that we know. Prior to this movie, I didn’t realize that Kraven is actually related to another occasional member of Spiderman’s ‘rogue gallery’ but that does play a part in the story. Additionally, it was a little weird with Aaron Taylor-Johnson having previously played Quicksilver in Avengers: Age of Ultron, especially with some of their similarities in overall appearance, but I was able to suspend disbelief enough to make it work and enjoy the movie. The performance of Aaron Taylor-Johnson was my favorite of the movie, followed closely by that of Alessandro Nivola.

I’m not sure if it was due to writing or some other aspect of the movie, but I feel like some of the other cast members had a lot of wasted potential in this movie. There could have been so much more done with Russel Crowe and Ariana DeBose’s characters, but it just didn’t happen. Calypso (DeBose) in particular is a very dynamic character from the comics, but they might have been limited by the constraints of a movie script length.

While I was overall entertained by the film, I fully understand why Sony and Marvel didn’t want to proceed more in this direction (and that of other solo movies like Morbius). I hope future live action movies can do a better job with bringing the source material to life, and honoring characters from so many viewer’s childhoods.