Thanks to movies like Morbius, Madame Web and, to a lesser extent, the Venom trilogy, excitement for Kraven the Hunter is almost non-existent among comic book fans.
The long-delayed movie once again appears to be taking major liberties with the source material and is another example of one of Spider-Man's greatest enemies taking centre stage without him. For what it's worth, filmmaker J.C. Chandor has been open about knowing the odds are stacked against Kraven the Hunter, even asking fans to give the movie a chance.
He elaborated on that during a recent interview with Screen Rant and started by acknowledging the past failings of Sony's Spider-Man Universe.
"I'm not going to fool anyone to think that all of those movies were the success that everyone wanted them to be," Chandor started. "And so I've been able to watch that process and be a part of it. All I can control is I go out and try and make the best movie, cast the best people, create the best action scenes, create the best drama, create the best story that I'm able to do."
"We did learn some things for sure about, in a way that play into that, which is like, let's not try to have this be telling 16 different stories at once, right?" he said of learning from Sony's unpopular Marvel movies. "Let's make a really good movie at its core and where that goes will take care of it of itself."
"I didn't to want give away the details of what we got going on, but I think from a structural standpoint, it was about telling a movie that stands by itself that is certainly a Marvel film that has the Rhino and has Foreigner and has Chameleon and has Calypso. It is this amazing group of characters that we've pulled together that are certainly drawn from all of the lore and all of the canon."
Chandor added, "I hope people will be really excited about what we've done, but in a way, the movie can stand on its own and you can walk into this movie knowing everything about all of that and nothing, and it really will hopefully work for you in both ways."
So, like Madame Web, it's another "standalone" story. That has both its advantages and disadvantages and in attempting to build excitement for Kraven the Hunter, the director said perhaps the last thing comic book fans want to hear.
"We have structured this movie as a classic origin story. If you know the Kraven storyline and you take this stuff as seriously as we've had and we have, when that last frame of our movie comes up, I think people will be excited that Kraven is teed up in that he will be teed up to go and carry on this journey towards villainy because that is the heart of this character."
"He doesn't start the movie off in that place. I think that's what makes the film really cool actually, is that you get to see that journey, but this is a family saga that if anyone knows, if anyone knows Kraven's Last Hunt and loves that, that's a place for Aaron and I, that was a hallmark of why we signed up to do this and we've created a character that over time it will make sense that he ends up there."
In other words, like Venom, Morbius, and Madame Web before it, Kraven the Hunter will almost certainly end with the title character donning his familiar vest in the last few minutes and becoming the character from the comics; you'll just need to sit through 2 hours of him being someone a gangster-hunting anti-hero to get to that point.
This is the same approach many comic book adaptations in the mid-2000s took and those nearly killed the genre. Devoting an entire movie to Kraven's origin only to wrap things up by setting the stage for a sequel unlikely to happen...well, that's not exactly going to encourage fans to buy a ticket this weekend.
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