Sony’s Spider-Man Villain is dumb but entertaining

There is a scene in J.C. Chandor’s ragtag superhero thriller “Kraven the Hunter.” In which the adorable title character (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) explains his superhero name to a confused Calypso (Ariana DeBose). His real name is Sergei Kravinov, but he became such a notorious hitman among the Russian mob that he earned the legendary nickname “The Hunter.” He also explains that one could indeed call him Sergei, but he prefers Kraven. “With K,” he says. It’s one of the most ridiculous things ever said by any superhero or supervillain in a blockbuster, including the two starring Jared Leto.

But then Taylor-Johnson somehow got away with it. The actor imbues Kraven’s ridiculous character with a brash confidence, so much so that we kind of forgive his off-putting arrogance. As we see throughout the film, Kraven has a deadly ability, and takes down bad guys with aplomb, making his arrogance well deserved. This is not a superhero story about an arrogant young man who learns humility, but a very sinister story about a man who is arrogant, charming, and handsome enough (complete with an impressive 8-pack) to remain arrogant. You want to hate Kraven, but you can’t.

Sadly, the film centered around the title hero is hot garbage. “Kraven the Hunter” is an incoherent, inept take on well-worn superhero tropes hastily thrust upon an audience that the filmmakers know they’ve long lost. Bad writing. Bad editing. In some scenes, one can’t understand the dialogue through the combination of bad voiceover and moose- and squirrel-level Russian accents. In one of the film’s many exposition gags, Ariana DeBose appears to have her mouth digitally manipulated to deliver new dialogue.

But, like Madame Web, Kraven’s badness – coupled with the main character’s brash confidence – lends him a certain kind of whimsical, let’s-all-laugh charm. “Craven” sucks, but one can still have a good time. Sure enough, many of the critics at my screening were laughing at the movie.

“Kraven the Hunter” is the latest — and perhaps the last — in Sony’s line of superhero films featuring sidekick Spider-Man villains, joining notorious flops like “Venom: The Last Dance.” “Madame Web” And Morbius. After “Kraven,” the Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters (or SPUMC) program will likely go on hiatus. This is how this genre ends. Not much fanfare, but a sight of Aaron Taylor-Johnson wrestling a tiger.

And oh lord, there’s a lot of ground to cover. Kraven is the son of a Russian gangster named Nikolai, played by Russell Crowe, and he tries to bring a touch of personality to a pretty public persona. Nikolai insisted that his sons Sergei and Dmitry (Levi Miller and Billy Barat as teens, and Taylor Johnson and Fred Hechinger as adults) remain strong at all times, and much of the film’s screenplay is devoted to rants about dominance and power. . When the boys’ mother dies by suicide, Nikolai’s first act is to take the kids on a hunting trip to Ghana to shoot animals and learn about blood and… power.

During said chase, Sergei is attacked by a piercing lion, dragged across the plains and randomly placed in front of Calypso, an American teenager living in Africa with her parents. Thanks to a lengthy exposition given by her grandmother, the audience learns that Calypso possesses a vial of the magical life-giving elixir, which she immediately gives to the wounded Nikolai. The elixir mixes with some of the lion’s blood in Nikolai’s wounds, and he comes back to life, now possessing lion-like strength, cat-like agility, enhanced vision, and the ability to scale buildings with his lion-like kung-fu fist.

In what can only be considered a small mercy, Kraven’s superpowers are understood from the jump. His super strength is used to bend prison bars, and his agility helps him perform a type of super parkour. Kraven can run extremely fast, but only fast enough to catch up with runaway cars. While “Kraven” does have the “superpowers test” scene common in the genre, it does not contain a scene where Kraven needs to explain his powers to someone else. They are clear, solid and speak for themselves. One has to be grateful for the director’s directness.

Kraven moves away from his abusive father to a remote geodesic dome in Africa. He spends his days communicating with the local animals and violently killing poachers. He sometimes returns to the big city or even to Russian prisons to kill people who might hire said hunters. The film’s opening scene is a very entertaining prison infiltration scene, which culminates in a gangster inserting a tiger fang into his jugular. Kraven loves animals.

However, nothing else is straightforward. The film’s convoluted plot involves an obsessed Russian gangster named Alexei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola) who, if he doesn’t take magic drugs, begins to transform into a hard-skinned monster. He calls himself a unicorn. The unicorn aims to kidnap Dmitri, who has brilliant mimicry abilities and sometimes calls himself the Chameleon. Also involved in the chaos is an assassin calling himself the Alien (Christopher Abbott) who can either hypnotize people or supernaturally slow down time. Either way, his strength seems to lie in his ability to move behind his targets very quickly.

Calypso, now played by DeBose, also shows up again to offer…almost nothing. Poor DeBose is saddled with some of the worst performances in any movie, and he can’t make them look pretty.

At least there’s a scene of Kraven attacking a tiger and cursing it when it attacks without a good reason. The cheetah scene is delightfully crazy. Also, “Kraven” gets a lot of mileage from its R rating; When people are stabbed, there are bursts of CGI arterial spray.

Some of the characters mentioned above will be familiar to Spider-Man fans, but really, who cares anymore? The idea of ​​an interconnected superhero cinematic universe has driven mainstream cinema for the better part of a decade, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe has used such a structure to stand astride the world like a mighty colossus. All cinema seemed to live in its shadow, and many other studios tried to imitate its success with their own cinematic universes. There was a now dead DC Extended Universe. There was a stillborn dark universe. Columbia Pictures even announced Ghost Corpswhich was intended to build an interconnected “Ghostbusters” universe. It was out of control.

Sony, which still owns the movie rights to Spider-Man, decided to create an interconnected Spider-Man Villain universe, of which “Kraven the Hunter” is the final chapter. However, when watching Chandor’s film, one can see that neither the studio nor the filmmakers are interested in starting anything anymore. There’s no assumption that fans will care about the lengthy mythology, and the additions remain light. This allows Kraven to be stupid on his own. In a strange way, this is comforting. We are free. We don’t have to take Kraven the Hunter seriously as a permanent character in many films. We can just watch it in a bad movie and move on with our lives.

Yes, “Craven” is bad, but it still has the potential to entertain.

/ Movie rating: 5 out of 10

“Kraven the Hunter” opens in theaters on December 13, 2024.