Five years ago, in 2019, Sony announced Kraven The Hunter and Madame Web as two new entries into their Spider-Man Movies Without Spider-Man Universe. Naturally, everyone thought both ideas were weird. Personally, I was willing to give the universe a chance because I thought they were playing coy about Spider-Man and that he’d obviously show up eventually. Boy was I wrong.
Since the announcement of Kraven The Hunter, Sony has seen its Spider-Villain films either completely flop or have very mild success. Venom: Let There Be Carnage, received mostly negative reviews but made Sony some money. Then, the notorious Morbius was released and turned into a meme so severely, that the internet hilariously tricked Sony into rereleasing it. Madame Web, this year, barely grossed one hundred million and was panned by everyone. Venom: The Last Dance, stands at nearly 440 million dollars at the box office and the reaction from fans and critics has been mixed.
It is clear that Sony’s attempt to build a cinematic universe around villains of a character who is absent from said universe has failed. I’m not sure why they thought it would be a success. The idea is absurd and will surely go down in history as one of the strangest decisions the company has ever made.
To end the year, Sony is giving it one last go as Kraven The Hunter is releasing on December 13th. Surprisingly, I think the movie actually looks pretty good. It has one saving grace that the other movies didn’t, but definitely should have, especially Venom: it’s rated R.
Who knows why Sony decided to make Kraven an R rated film while they let the Venom franchise be PG13 action comedies when they clearly should have been R rated horror films. I’m just glad they did it. When the first trailer for the movie dropped, the action drew me in instantly. Kraven bites off someone’s nose, slams a bear trap into someone’s face, throws a metal pole through a guy in a helicopter, and slices several throats. I’m all for that kind of stuff. The plot, however, showed itself to be a pretty generic comic book story that I’ll probably sit through to get to the killing. While the action was impressive, Sony had let me down with every other film they had released in their weird, thoughtless cinematic universe, so I mostly reserved my hope.
Then, the second trailer came out. Once again, the plot seems fine. I definitely like father versus son revenge stories, but the plot doesn’t seem particularly impressive. However, just a few seconds into the trailer, Kraven takes the tooth of what seems to be a tiger and murders someone with it. Awesome. The rest of the action in the trailer, until about two minutes into the trailer, is mostly just slightly extended shots from the previous trailer which I actually think is fine as I don’t want every cool moment to be revealed in the trailer. Then, the Rhino shows up! I absolutely love the design for the Rhino, and it seems like the general response to his design is positive, even though most people seem to be unexcited for the movie.
Did anyone ask for a movie to be made about Kraven? No. Did anyone who didn’t work for Sony at the time think it was a good idea? No. Is it a strange idea to turn a villain who just had a video game released about him in which he is a definitive bad, evil guy into a sort of antihero? Yes. Does that mean Kraven is destined to be a bad movie? Not necessarily. The movie, like almost every movie no matter how strange the idea, has potential to be a solid film. Is it likely to be a cinematic masterpiece? It is not, but the movie could certainly be a fun, bloody watch.
The box office projections for Kraven The Hunter don’t look good. The opening weekend projections indicate the movie will be a financial let down, but could they be wrong? I genuinely think the movie looks good. It doesn’t look amazing, but it looks to be the best out of all of Sony’s Spider-Man-less films. I think there’s a chance the movie will perform higher than the current projections once the reviews are released and positive word of mouth spreads. If the movie is as good as I think it will be, I hope Sony’s track record doesn’t immediately put moviegoers off from potentially seeing this film. Audiences have very little trust in Sony to put out a good movie with their odd choice of Marvel characters, but maybe this is finally the time they do so. They played the ace up their sleeve and made the movie rated R, a wise choice as an R rating attached to a superhero movie is going to pull at least some attention towards the film. Regardless of projections and general mild reaction toward the film, I think it looks pretty good.
Who knows, maybe Sony showed us all the good action already and Kraven The Hunter will be a disaster. What do you think of the upcoming film? Let me know in the comments!
