Spider-Man foe Kraven is a villain through and through, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a comic book where he's portrayed in a heroic light. It makes sense then that he's not getting the hero treatment in this December's Kraven the Hunter movie from Sony Pictures.
A newly released featurette doubles down on the character's sinister side as we see Aaron Taylor-Johnson's Kraven hunting down his targets.
However, the sneak peek - which contains lots of bloody new footage from the movie - also drives home the fact that Kraven the Hunter is a "standalone" story, the same branding given to Madame Web earlier this year. Presumably, that means it takes place in its own reality rather than the world shared by Venom, Morbius, and, Earth-616's Vulture.
The biggest takeaway from this preview is the fact both in the social media posts and featurette, Kraven the Hunter is now being billed as a gangster story.
It could be the studio has decided that branding is going to appeal to a wider audience (there isn't a single allusion to Spider-Man or any superpowered-relating goings-on here) or simply what filmmaker J.C. Chandor was always aiming for with his reinvention of Kraven.
We'll see, but there's every chance this could be the movie that turns things around for Sony's Spider-Man Universe. It's interesting, though, that there's no sign of the CG Rhino the studio was pushing heavily in past previews.
Check out this new Kraven the Hunter featurette below and stay tuned for the next trailer which is rumoured to drop any day now.
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.
Directed by J.C. Chandor from a story by Richard Wenk and a screenplay by Richard Wenk and Art Marcum & Matt Holloway, Kraven the Hunter is based on the Marvel Comics and produced by Avi Arad, Matt Tolmach, and David Householter.
The cast is led by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola, Christopher Abbott, and Russell Crowe.
Kraven the Hunter arrives in theaters on December 13.