Support NeoGAF

[Draugoth]

• Rotten Tomatoes: 14% (56 Reviews)
• Metacritic: 33 (24 Reviews)

Reviews:​

Hollywood Reporter (20/100):

Punishingly dull.

Variety (40):

I’ve seen much worse comic-book movies than “Kraven the Hunter,” but maybe the best way to sum up my feelings about the film is to confess that I didn’t stay to see if there was a post-credits teaser. That’s a dereliction of duty, but it’s one I didn’t commit on purpose. I simply hadn’t bothered to think about it.

Deadline:

It turns out to be a spectacular action- and character-driven performance from Aaron Taylor-Johnson and some tight exciting filmmaking from director J.C. Chandor, whose previous films, other than Triple Frontier, are far more indie in style and scope

TotalFilm (50):

Though closer in quality to Morbius than Venom, Kraven is far from a catastrophe and serves up a decent helping of bloodthirsty, globe-trotting action. Taylor-Johnson makes a muscular if self-satisfied protagonist in a film that would have been better off standing on its own shoeless feet than cravenly (or should that be, 'kravenly') cleaving itself to its comic book brethren.

IndieWire (C-):

Immune to fan response, impervious to quality control, and so broadly unencumbered by its place in a shared universe that most of its scenes don’t even feel like they take place in the same film, “Kraven the Hunter” might be very, very bad (and by “might be” I mean “almost objectively is”), but the more relevant point is that it feels like it was made by people who have no idea what today’s audiences might consider as “good.

Screenrant (50):

After nine years, Aaron Taylor-Johnson returns to Marvel superhero fare, but while Kraven the Hunter has potential, it's a middling origin story.

SlashFilm (50):

Sony, still possessing the film rights to Spider-Man, decided to make an interconnected Spider-Man Villain universe, of which "Kraven the Hunter" is the final chapter. Watching Chandor's film, though, one can see that neither the studio nor the filmmakers are interested in starting anything anymore. There is no presumption that fans will be interested in long-form mythmaking, and sequel teases remain light. This allows "Kraven" to be stupid on its own. And, in a weird way, that's a relief. We're free.

The Guardian (2/5):

Crowe’s safari-going Russian oligarch is the main redeeming feature of this Spider-Man-adjacent tale but there’s not much to like elsewhere

The A.V. Club (67):

Kraven The Hunter gets closer than any of its predecessors to understanding the silly, entertaining freedom of shedding continuity. Then again, maybe it’s best that this misbegotten series quits while it’s just-barely ahead.

The Telegraph (1/5):

If you thought Morbius and Madame Web were bad, the extended Spider-Man Universe hits a new rock bottom with this diabolical entry

Collider (3/10):

Kraven the Hunter's bland storytelling, subpar acting, and staggering technical issues are proof that the Spider-Man IP needs to be protected before it becomes an endangered species.

Directed by J.C. Chandor:

Kraven has a complex relationship with his father which sets him on a path of vengeance and motivates him to become the greatest and most feared hunter.

Release Date: December 13
Cast:

• Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Sergei Kravinoff / Kraven:
• Ariana DeBose as Calypso Ezili
• Fred Hechinger as Dmitri Smerdyakov / Chameleon
• Alessandro Nivola as Aleksei Sytsevich / Rhino
• Christopher Abbott as the Foreigner
• Russell Crowe as Nikolai Kravinoff

 

[Fake]

 

[Saber]

What about doing a movie about the origins of Flash Tompson next? Or perhaps that stupid nerd friend of Peter? Seeing that you guys loving burning money on stupid ideas, those ones are equaly suitable choices for you guys.

 

[IDKFA]

From the Telegraph review

I don’t think I’d ever seen a truly bad Alessandro Nivola performance until his giggly rendition of Aleksei Sytsevich, aka Rhino, a mercenary who has superhuman strength and, as you might expect, bullet-proof hide. “Like a RHINO!!”, he helpfully barks. He also attempts, at random, a kind of open-mouthed rhino distress noise which will haunt the actor for some decades on YouTube.

Taylor-Johnson glowers obliviously through the film, angling his cheekbones and flexing his physique as if the action romps of the 1980s never happened. You get nothing off him except an extreme awareness of the gym time he put in. When the screenplay offers him any dialogue, it’s diabolical. “My father was right about one thing. You are nothing,” he snarls at Rhino, as CG buffalo stampede around them – a sequence, in fact, that’s so fake and soul-crushingly perfunctory that everything is nothing.

This film sounds like it's in the "so bad it's good" category. A film so bad that it's unintentionally a comedy. I might check it out.

 

[Trunx81]

Best scene is when Kraven summons the animal spirits and screams "It´s hunting time!" on the top of his lungs, while Sydney Sweeney twerks in her Spiderwoman outfit.

They really should re-write that law that forces you to make a movie because you would otherwise loose the license...

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Put it this way.

Even if you’re a big comic fan who knows all the characters, whose going to watch this?

And for the normal folks who definitely would not know who Kraven is, why would they watch?

Just based on that it was destined to be bad from the beginning in sales. And the studio would know it’s no Spider-Man or avengers so the plot will be shit too. Same goes for all the other junky supe movies trying to fill every quarter with a new movie. As if other ones like morbiius or madam web would be successful either. Saturation City.

 

[Lukaku's First Touch]

Holy shit did that one review actually say it's worse than madam web LOL.

 

[Doom85]

Holy shit did that one review actually say it's worse than madam web LOL.

I mean, Madame Webb at least had, IMHO, four very attractive actresses to look at. Although fuck the marketing for thinking we’d get to see three of them in spandex for some of the movie when it’s just a very brief future vision of the villain and that’s it (and they don’t even get powers in the film, so what’s the deal with that? How many sequels were they planning on from this thing?!).

Also at least it’s wasn’t featuring any major characters that feel wasted without Spider-man there. Kraven and Rhino though? Get Spidey in there, dumbasses! I’m not sure how fully the deal with Disney works, but if they can’t use Holland’s Spider-Man, why not bring in Garfield’s Spider-Man, they wouldn’t worry about messing up MCU continuity and boom, we got the Amazing Spider-man 3 movie.

 

[boris90]

I’ve heard that Kraven is a mixed bag. Some people are annoyed about the CGI looking off in places and how they tweaked Kraven’s character to make him more of a soft antihero than the savage hunter fans expected. The plot sounds pretty meh too, and apparently, it feels rushed. But on the flip side, Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s performance and those gritty R-rated action scenes have been getting some love. Honestly, I’ll probably wait until it’s “easier to find” (wink), just for the fight scenes alone.

 

[dorkimoe]

why do they keep trying super hero movies? they havent made 1 good one

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

Kraven and their intelligence.

'' Desde que murió mi mama, no la he visto''.

 

[Fake]

why do they keep trying super hero movies? they havent made 1 good one

Kraven is not a super hero btw.

 

[ManaByte]

why do they keep trying super hero movies? they havent made 1 good one

Idiots who saw the success of Venom and it gave them delusions of grandeur.

Even After ‘Kraven the Hunter’ and ‘Madame Web,’ Sony’s Marvel Movies Aren’t Dead (EXCLUSIVE)

"Kraven the Hunter" signifies an end to Sony's spin-off movies of secondary Spider-Man characters. But it is not the end of Sony's Marvel films.

variety.com

Sony has never approached its comic book adaptations with that level of intentional narrative cohesion, as exemplified by the studio’s casual, lowercased and rhetorically ungainly phrasing for its superhero films: Sony’s universe of Marvel characters.

Sony insiders also fiercely defend the success of the three “Venom” films starring Tom Hardy, which have earned more than $1.8 billion worldwide. The latest film, “Venom: The Last Dance,” has earned the lowest grosses yet for the franchise ($473 million), especially against the $856 million global take for 2018’s “Venom.” But “The Last Dance” cost $120 million — thrifty for a superhero movie — and it improved on the international grosses of 2021’s “Venom: Let There Be Carnage.” So there’s really no financial reason for Sony to stop making “Venom” movies any time soon.

(except they killed Venom off in the third movie)

But “Venom” — built around a widely popular character with its own distinct imprint on the culture — also presented Sony with the false impression that audiences would flock to see a movie about any Spider-Man character without Spider-Man in the film.

“All of these characters are famous because they went up against Spider-Man,” says Exhibitor Relations analyst Jeff Bock. “Unfortunately for Sony, they had a taste of success with ‘Venom,’ and that kind of spoiled everything for them, because they thought they could just spin off all of these characters. I don’t think they realized that Venom could carry a franchise, whereas these other characters could not. To not have Spider-Man in these films was the fatal flaw.”

Also Sony chose to keep Spider-Man out of the spin-offs, NOT Marvel:

According to one Sony source, the deal with Disney never precluded Sony from using Spider-Man in its movies that didn’t bear his name; the “Spider-Verse” movies’ profusion of Peter Parkers, Gwen Stacys and other various Spider-People certainly bears that out. But there was a feeling within the studio that audiences would not accept Holland’s Spidey suddenly popping up in a live-action film that wasn’t a part of the MCU, especially after “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and the Marvel Studios projects “Loki” and “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” established definitive boundaries to the Marvel multiverse.

Dancing around Spider-Man without ever getting to use him also contributed to the feeling that these spin-off films were merely exercises in, ahem, craven opportunism. “You can feel the cynicism a mile away,” says a veteran producer. “They’re grinding out product, and it feels like it. There’s no quality control.”

 

[diffusionx]

why did Sony see Madame Web and say, we can go deeper

 

[Guy_who_thinks_hes_cool]

so does that mean I should just sell refund my tickets?

 

[Valedix]

I do wonder what the fuck sony is smoking to blow this much money on a movie like this.

 

[RagnarokIV]

RagnarokIV: 0/4

Shit and wank

 

[Doom85]

(except they killed Venom off in the third movie)

Spoiler

Not really, the post credits confirm a piece of the symbiote survived, so Venom can regenerate from that.

The Venom movies are done, for now at least, since Tom Hardy was ready to move on apparently.

 

[NahaNago]

This movie was just meh. The action was definitely better than madame web but the story and acting at times was just really terrible. I was trying to figure out how they could modify the movie to make it better but I'd just redo just about everything. This movie felt like a 90s action movie but not as corny fun.

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

Best scene is when Kraven summons the animal spirits and screams "It´s hunting time!" on the top of his lungs, while Sydney Sweeney twerks in her Spiderwoman outfit.

They really should re-write that law that forces you to make a movie because you would otherwise loose the license...

It seems that the dialogues and powers were written by a little Kindergarten child..

 

[GateofD]

It’s like I get they have to release the movies to keep the license. But surely they can’t do it without having be 100% poop

 

[wipeout364]

People just do not appreciate that these movies are grounded in reality.

 

[MonkD]

Action was fine, but everything else was utter shite. I was honestly hoping that it was worse so I could at least laugh at it. Rhino letting out an autistic screech was hilarious, would've loved to see more stuff like that.

Funny how they've setup Jackal as someone who can hand out free animal powers off screen. And what was the point of the Surf Dracula scene at the end, he was already a hunter and had zero character development?

 

[SidViscous]

Word of warning - even clicking the watch button on this thread is enough to kill you of boredom.

 

[AJUMP23]

Not watching this TRASH.

Until it is on streaming.

 

[Nintendo's Witch]

More like Karen The Hunter.

 

[The Fartist]

 

[EverydayBeast]

The 2010 marvel movies gave motivation to all these super hero films, and shows.

 

[YCoCg]

The 2010 marvel movies gave motivation to all these super hero films, and shows.

How old are you? Do you not remember the trash from the 2000s? Daredevil, etc, that load of movies that came about after the success of Spiderman.