After three writers and two years of delays, Kraven The Hunter is finally in theaters. And boy, is it bad. It seems even the stacked cast and extra time in the oven weren’t enough to save this film or its bizarre Spiderman-less franchise. Kraven The Hunter may not be the worst film in its cinematic universe, but that’s only because the bar had been set so low.

This film suffers from almost every affliction in the rest of the series. The script is terrible, the acting is stinted, and the fight scenes are too little too late. I had high hopes for Kraven The Hunter. The comic book character is cool and one that would play well on screen. Unfortunately, the terrible script and bonkers choices keep this film from even being a serviceable one.

Sony’s Cinematic Universe

To date, there have been six entries in Sony’s ill-advised Spiderman-less villain universe. A trilogy of Venom movies, the forever memed Morbius, and the insufferable Madame Web. Even at its best, none of these films were any good. And at its worst, it delivered something as incomprehensible as Madame Web.

Kraven The Hunter doesn’t fall as low as Dakota Johnsons Valentines Day flop. This film does actually have superheroes with superpowers. But it barely holds anything together in delivering its story and characters.

Kraven’s Origin

Kraven The Hunter begins with essentially two back story pieces. The first is a present-day assassination mission that shows Aaron Taylor Johnson’s Kraven infiltrating a prison and then escaping in glorious fashion. It’s a breezy setup and conclusion that tells us just about everything we need to know about the character. Then the film shoots us sixteen years in the past for a painfully long and boring second origin story.

After this second origin story wraps up, we then have to wait another thirty minutes before the villain of the film even appears. It takes even longer before he sets his plan into motion and the plot begins in earnest. That means for the first hour of this film we are essentially watching Aaron Taylor Johnson’s back story and a couple of A-Team style missions that do nothing to further the plot. There is no conflict for the first hour of this film, just bad world-building told through terrible dialogue.

From Villian To Hero

Like other entries in this series, Sony has decided to change Kraven from a villain to a hero. This is fine in the confines of a movie where we are rooting for the main character. But the change in his backstory makes him a much less interesting character. Instead of an incredibly dangerous villain who hunts the world’s deadliest prey, Kraven is a preservationist of sorts who can’t stand the thought of killing animals but will slash humans’ throats without a second thought. The film’s reasoning for this? Daddy issues.

There’s probably a joke in here about go woke go broke, but truthfully, it’s just bad writing. There are several ways the writers could have worked around Kraven’s backstory to give him a good guy angle. But the idea that he learned how to hunt from his dad but that choosing to use this skill on people instead of animals makes him a good guy is silly.

The Real Villians

The other big change from the comics to the screen is that Kraven now has superpowers. Kraven The Hunter explains this by showing him becoming blood brothers with a massive lion and then receiving an unknown potion. This works as well as any other superpower explanation I suppose, but it’s odd that the film chose to reveal Kravens powers but no one else’s.

Rhino, another classic Spiderman villain, is the big bad of this movie. His powers are explained through barely decipherable dialogue. Kraven also comes across Calypso, a voodoo witch in the comics who can use a bow and arrow in this film. Foreigner is here as well, played by Christopher Abbot and his powers are given absolutely no explanation. And finally, Gladiator 2 star Fred Hechinger plays Chameleon. He gains powers at the end of the film with the help of an unseen doctor and procedure. It’s truly a mess of characters and most of them have no screen time for the first hour of the film.

Third Act Spectacle

The film mercilessly winds down its third act at about the hour and forty-minute mark. Here, we get a rather serviceable fight sequence between Kraven and the various film’s baddies. It looks pretty good on screen but it feels like a fight that should have come at the end of a first or second act. Leaving it for the film’s conclusion feels like the writers knew this was all they had. And they had to wait until the end to show it.

None of these Sony films, besides the Spiderverse flicks, ever tread into meaningful themes, but Kraven surprisingly does. There is a large subtext here about toxic masculinity seen through the struggle between Kraven and his father Russel Crowe. This would be an interesting theme to explore if the non-toxic male wasn’t also spending the whole movie shirtlessly ripping throats. It’s just another example of bad writing that goes nowhere and makes little sense.

The Future of Sony’s Cinematic Universe

This is clearly the end of Sony’s ill-fated spider villain universe. Half of the series films were released in 2024 and aside from Venom’s Last Dance, they’ve been embarrassing failures. Kraven’s modest 110-130 million dollar budget gave me hope that maybe this film would turn it around. It’s a great character with an interesting backstory and to be fair, Aaron Taylor Johnson looks great in the role. He’s just given a terrible script and no conflict to work with throughout the film’s runtime.

Kraven The Hunter is a more coherent film than this year’s earlier release of Madame Web. Some of the technical issues like ADR have been buttoned up here. There is still a ton of ADR, but at least Kraven does a better job of hiding it. This film, however, can’t hide its awful script, terrible premise, and total lack of vision. You had a good run Sony, but I think it’s time we say farewell to a friend.