2024 wasn't a great year for superhero movies, but an R-Rated Kraven the Hunter at least had the potential to end things on a positive note. It didn't.
As expected, Sony Pictures delivered another critical and commercial flop; Spider-Man was nowhere to be found in Kraven's goofy origin story, with the villain instead becoming a gangster-hunting anti-hero with daddy issues. He did, however, battle Rhino in the movie's final act.
In a bid to pay homage to that character's comic book appearance, he became a mutant, of sorts. Unfortunately, even that didn't really work. Not only is he far too small but the cartoonish design makes one of Spidey's most formidable enemues look like a leftover from a 2005 comic book movie.
A clip of Kraven and Rhino's battle has been receiving a lot of attention on social media over the past 24 hours, largely for how ridiculous it all looks.
Responses to the fight - which includes a lot of green screen - include, "awful film," "[Syfy] channel presents," and "The fight wasn't entirely bad but man...they made Rhino tiny!"
Another viral moment involving Rhino saw actor Alessandro Nivola perform a weird scream upon learning Kraven had killed his men. Explaining that recently, the Kraven the Hunter star said:
"The way I performed it was totally silent. It was a silent scream. When I did it, everybody laughed on set. It was so weird, but they all loved it. We kept referring to it as the ‘silent scream moment. So I kept asking J.C. [Chandor] during the edit if the silent scream was still in the cut, and he said, ‘Yeah, of course. We would never lose the silent scream.’ But when I saw the movie, it had that guttural voice catch, which I don’t think was as effective as it would’ve been otherwise."
You can watch that newly surfaced Kraven the Hunter clip below.
Kraven the Hunter is the action-packed, R-rated, standalone story of how one of Marvel’s most iconic villains came to be.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays Kraven, a man whose complex relationship with his ruthless gangster father, Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe), starts him down a path of vengeance with brutal consequences, motivating him to become not only the greatest hunter in the world, but also one of its most feared.
The cast also includes Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola, Christopher Abbott, and Russell Crowe. J.C. Chandor directs from a screenplay by Richard Wenk and Art Marcum & Matt Holloway.
Kraven the Hunter is now available on Digital and arrives on DVD and Blu-ray on March 4.