2024   Sony Pictures

Rated:  R

Length:  2 hr  7min

Action ~ Thriller

Directed by:  J. C. Chandor

Starring:  Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola, Christopher Abbott, and Russell Crowe.

“Another Marvel Mess…..more like Kraven The Terrible!”

SYNOPSIS FROM THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE:

Kraven the Hunter is the visceral, action-packed origin story of how and why one of Marvel’s most iconic villains came to be. Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays Kraven, a man whose complex relationship with his ruthless father, Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe), 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.

FROM NETFLIX TUDUM:

Kraven the Hunter has been a mainstay of Spider-Man’s “rogues gallery” for more than six decades — but you’ve never seen him like this. In J.C. Chandor’s 2024 film Kraven the Hunter, the Russian big-game hunter of comic book fame is reinvented as a vigilante conservationist with a taste for vengeance. Played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kick-Ass, Tenet), this time Kraven is on the hunt, piecing together a vast global conspiracy — and you’re invited along for the ride.

The latest entry in Sony’s Spider-Man universe follows last year’s Madame Web and Venom: The Last Dance, all of which take the world of New York’s most beloved web-slinging superhero and spin it into a whole new multiverse of possibilities.

Here’s everything you need to know about Kraven the Hunter now that the film has prowled onto Netflix in the US.

When will Kraven the Hunter be on Netflix?

Stream it now.

How is Kraven the Hunter related to Marvel?

Both Kraven and his brother Dmitri (who will eventually be known as the Chameleon) were created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko during the original run of Marvel’s flagship The Amazing Spider-Man comic series. Chameleon first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #1 in March 1963, with Kraven joining him to take down the wall-crawler in The Amazing Spider-Man #15 in August 1964. The pair weren’t revealed to be half-brothers until J. M. DeMatteis and Mike Zeck’s iconic “Kraven’s Last Hunt” storyline in 1987.

On the cinematic side, Kraven the Hunter is set in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe of Marvel characters, which kicked off with Venom in 2018. While the films are not directly connected to Tom Holland’s Spider-Man trilogy (set in Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe), they do share the same larger multiverse, as seen in 2023’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (which is also streaming now). 

MY THOUGHTS:

I will confess that I am not a hardcore Marvel fan. I have watched a good number of the movies in the past, the good ones. I watched this because it is brand new to streaming and I am a huge Aaron Taylor-Johnson fan. I first saw him in Savages, then Nocturnal Animals, Outlaw King and The Fall Guy. I love him in all those movies. I feel like he did the best he could with what he was given to work with in this movie.

I have to bring up Madame Web because it feels exactly the same to me. Bad acting, bad writing and a completely disjointed storyline. The beginning origin story barely held my attention, but I was done at the halfway mark when Kraven is bouncing off tall buildings, landing on his barefeet and then running (in barefeet) as fast as the escaping van, then holding back a helicopter from taking off (in his barefeet).

But I hung there, gotta write a review. The Foreigner, the Rhino and Calypso were terrible. Really bad acting there. I love Russell Crowe, The Pope’s Exorcist is one of my recent favorites of his. But this was bad although, again, I think he did the best he could with what he was given to work with. That Russian accent started to really get on my nerves. The only saving grace was Aaron Taylor- Johnson.

Nope, this one is a dog like Madame Web.

Don’t watch it.