The first Kraven the Hunter trailer roared online yesterday (after initially being leaked) and...well, it was certainly quite something.
For years, comic book fans have dreamed of seeing Kraven hunt Spider-Man - long before he joined the MCU too - but this movie will tell the character's origin story because, uh, "Villains Aren't Born. They're Made." We're not sure what that means either, but all signs currently point to Kraven the Hunter being another Morbius.
We're certainly not going to write it off based on one trailer, especially with some solid talent both behind and in front of the camera. This is, however, an Avi Arad Marvel movie, and you know what that means if you've watched The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Venom, and the executive's many other dire efforts!
Rather than breaking down the trailer, we've combed through the footage to explore why this take on Kraven makes no sense and to take a closer look at the missteps Sony Pictures has already made with the classic Spidey foe...
5. Is That The Real Kraven?
If there's one character who actually acts like the Kraven the Hunter we all know from the comic books in this trailer, it's Russell Crowe's unnamed Kravinoff. It's established that he's Kraven's father, but between the accent and his villainous behaviour, he very much reminds us of Sergei.
Is it possible he's the true Kraven and Taylor-Johnson is actually playing Vladimir, Alyosha or Nedrocci? We're guessing not, but Sony has probably taken inspiration from them while creating this version of the character.
That's all in an effort to portray him as an anti-hero who has yet to meet Spider-Man, of course, and while he was a big-game hunter before encountering the web-slinger, everything we see here looks to be an original story. Still, it's weird how much more like the true Kraven the title character's father is!
4. A Magic Radioactive Power-Giving Lion
On the page, it's been established that Kraven is an Olympic-level athlete who is a skilled hand-to-hand combatant, proficient with various weaponry, and an all-round badass. However, he becomes a match for Spider-Man by regularly ingesting a potion made from various unnamed jungle herbs.
That didn't fly for this movie, though, and Kraven instead gets superpowers after a lion attacks him and a drop of its blood falls into an open wound on his chest. Who knew that could happen, eh?
It's ludicrous, but we are talking comic books here so it might work. What's most perplexing is why Sony felt Kraven should gain powers from a magical (radioactive?) lion so he can acquire odd-looking lion eyes and Sabretooth-like abilities. As well as eating noses, we'd bet on him chowing down on a raw steak at some point...
3. An Anti-Hero Kraven
Sony may be happy for Spider-Man to be part of the MCU, but without the web-slinger on hand, the studio has decided to cash in on his many villains. It remains a perplexing decision, particularly as Kraven, Venom, and Morbius are all who they are because of Peter Parker (and would be great in Marvel Studios' hands).
As a result, this trailer establishes Kraven as a bad guy hunting anti-hero who, if the tagline is to be believed, only turns evil when he meets Spidey. It doesn't make a tonne of sense, especially when the villain was a big game-hunting nutjob long before he decided to hunt the wall-crawler.
Madame Web looks set to introduce at least some female spider-heroes, while Silk and Spider-Man Noir projects are in the works for TV. We don't have too much faith in those and don't think the current plan is for them to battle these bad guys. Unfortunately, Arad really wants Peter back!
2. Eye-Rolling Nods To The Comics
If Sony does anything well, it's making us believe these movies will actually adhere to the comics. On posters, Venom and Morbius both look like they've been pulled straight from the page, and the same can now be said of Kraven.
However, neither Eddie Brock nor Michael Morbius has much in common with what we see in the source material, and some forced imagery here of spiders that look a lot like the emblem on Peter Parker's chest is more cringe-inducing than anything else. Hell, we'll be shocked if Kraven doesn't have arachnophobia.
That comic-accurate costume looks superb, but if we had to hazard a guess, it's something which has been added in reshoots that the character will wear right at the very end of the movie. What we see here may even be from the final scene, a movie Sony pulled with Rhino while marketing The Amazing Spider-Man 2!
1. A Mutated Rhino
Talking of Rhino, what did he do to deserve this? Wasting the villain as a throwaway baddie in Kraven the Hunter is a very Sony thing to do, but the fact he's now a regular guy who transforms into a Rocksteady-like monster feels like an idea pulled straight from a mid-2000s comic book adaptation.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 proved that a mechanical suit has advantages and disadvantages, while a massive guy in a suit is also a pretty tricky concept to pull off. Ultimately, this still feels like the worst possible option.
It's a puzzling move and yet another bad guy who could have stolen the show in the MCU wasted as a throwaway addition to a wholly unnecessary movie. Between the cheesy catchphrase and questionable VFX, we're expecting Kraven to go into battle against something akin to this...