Kraven the Hunter

Okay I have put it off long enough, it is time to watch Kraven the Hunter. Now when the first trailer was released for this I knew it was going to be terrible because 1) Aaron Taylor-Johnson was a truly horrendous casting decision and 2) The trailer didn’t even know what the film was about. I knew immediately that we were going to be struggling for a plot of any kind which is about par for the course for Sony superhero films. Also we are doing an awful lot of Spider-man adjacent characters, without Spiderman. I know how all the licencing and shit works but at that point just don't. If you can’t make a good film with the characters you have, then don’t. It's actually really not difficult.

This is already ridiculous. Aaron Taylro Johnson can get as cut as he wants but he is physically too small to be playing this role. This role needed a BIG fucking Russian dude, not the guy that got killed off playing Quicksilver. The physics for a speedster and a Russian hunter who kills with his bare hands need to be drastically different, but Sony shit the bed in arguably the most important part of the movie.

Is it possible to speak Russian without using a super low, gravely voice? And then just no accent at all? Jesus christ. If you have me thinking “this isn’t even a little realistic” during a COMIC BOOK MOVIE, you have fucked up spectacularly.

Okay they do make Kraven have a half brother…that is somewhat accurate, and Calypso exists. It is still a massive question as to how we are telling this story at all without Spiderman. These two Russian boys sound so very very American. And they live in London, but still don’t have English accents? No accents of any kind despite fully Russian parents and living in London…okay.

And now a lion is eating him? He was given some kind of potion to keep him alive by little Calypso. And now he's angsty. God these flashback are terrible, if it was going to be a full on fucking origin story then it should have started there. I think filmmakers need to realize that there is more to screenwriting than cold opens, not every project needs one. Let’s get creative here folks, perhaps chronological order is okay once in a while.

We are trying to lean really hard into this daddy issues backstory when the reality is that Kraven is just crazy, he’s literally psychotic. Why are we trying to make him anything else?

He’s just so bland. He isn’t intimidating, not sure why he has a twinge of a southern accent but it is really taking me out of the story.

Calypso is just normal? And they are friends now? What the fuck is happening? Who wrote this? I need to beat them with a stack of comic books.

Not introduced to the antagonist of the film until 50 minutes in. That’s just horrendous pacing. There is no act structure of any kind here. It’s ridiculous.

Why are we singing? What is this? Why is this happening?

This brotherly relationship is so forced. There is nothing there, why are we acting like they had a relationship after he ran away? Why did he run away if he was just gonna come back and interact with his father? WHO WROTE THIS? Richard Wenk you fucking hack. I could shit out a better script than this in a day. You didn’t even wikipedia this character before writing did you? You lazy ass motherfucker, this structure sucks, your pacing is garbage and this bears no resemblance to the actual comic book character. The only bad thing about this movie that isn’t your fault is the absolutely garbage casting.

Little brother gets kidnapped so now Kraven is Tom Cruise running through the city chasing after this van. Okay, that action sequence didn’t suck but it was inconsistent as hell.

I’m struggling to even find a story here, which I knew was gonna be a problem. We spent too much time in flashbacks, we didn’t get to the central conflict of the film until halfway through, literally so much and so little is happening at the same time. This movie is such hot garbage. This is worse than Madame Web, I am so sorry but I would rather watch that 1000X if it meant never watching this bullshit again. 0/10 and even that feels generous, can I give negative numbers? I’ve never done that before, but I genuinely feel like 0 isn’t low enough. We’re gonna go with -2/10 actually, this movie is so viscerally offensive to me, every single thing about this is incorrect.