Kraven the Hunter movie review: Audiences are hunted in Sony’s Spider-Man universe film

A scene from ‘Kraven the Hunter’

The first shot of a long, snowy road kraven the hunterThe sixth film in the infamous Sony Spider-Man Universe (SSU). Considering how all the other movies are except this one poison The films proved to be a failure the first time around. christaven Felt like a metaphor for the studio’s long and trying journey with Marvel’s IP. After all, when you only have characters related to Spider-Man and you can’t even use the friendly neighborhood superhero, it’s not too difficult to work with. despite being much better than morbius And madam webSony’s latest and possibly final superhero outing, Kraven the Hunter, Still misses its mark by miles.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who plays Kraven in the new film, is no stranger to the world of Marvel. After playing the lead role in kick ass Next came Pietro Maximoff Captain America: The Winter Soldier And Avengers: Age of Ultron, Taylor-Johnson takes it up a notch in Kraven the Hunter in which he largely plays a role. After escaping the clutches of his abusive father Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe) and abandoning his younger brother Dmitri (Fred Hechinger), Sergei (Taylor-Johnson) turns to a hunter living at his late mother’s sanctuary in Russia. . Like any superhero movie, troubles knock his way and Sergei has to harness his animal instincts and become the world’s greatest hunter.

As a fan of Hollywood movies, living in the Eastern Hemisphere has its disadvantages; Since most big films are released in the West first, the reception it receives there is faster than that of a film. kraven the hunter – like Nikolai shoots a random deer to teach his sons a lesson about being powerful – was mercilessly shot down by critics. So not surprisingly, it blew away my expectations kraven the hunter Which, surprisingly, offered quite a bit more than its terrible Sony siblings.

Unlike other non-poison entries into this universe (with only half a dozen movies, shouldn’t that be called something small? How about a galaxy?), the biggest takeaway from the film is Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who carries the film on his massive shoulders. Let’s go. Add to this some impressive action set pieces that, fortunately, are R-rated, and make for some pretty visuals for those fans of carnage (poison pun intended). One scene in the trailer that kept me hooked was the barefoot Taylor-Johnson chasing a van in central London and it managed to live up to expectations.

But apart from these aspects, almost everything is a royal mess and this is where the film falters. Not only is the wafer-thin plot painfully predictable, but the secondary characters, despite being played by competent actors, like Academy Award winner Ariana DeBose, are reduced to one-dimensional puppets that add little to the overall narrative. Playing Calypso, a supervillain with a glorious past in the world of comics, DeBose has become a lawyer who happens to be in the right place at the right time with a deck of tarot cards or a magical potion that will bring life back to life. Our titular hero. Alessandro Nivola as Rhino and Christopher Abbott as Alien probably offer little other than a place at the top of the list of the strangest villains in the Marvel world.

Still, it’s the people behind the camera who are the biggest villains Kraven the Hunter. The dubbing is off, the editing is messy and for a film that aims to have a jungle worth of CG animals, the VFX is unimpressive. The film gets burdened with issues and the gunplay becomes difficult to overcome. kraven the hunter If it had been released before countless superhero movies had put audiences into permanent superhero fatigue, it might have worked. The new film is trying to outdo the better works we’ve come across in recent times, christavenHunter It feels like a capable hunter searching for a non-existent prey in an overgrown garden which he has mistaken for a forest. Let’s see what the upcoming series of the universe spider-noir There may be a way out of the deep hole the studio has dug itself into.

Kraven the Hunter is playing in Indian theaters