Kraven the Hunter arrives in theaters this Friday and we've just tracked down the first wave of reviews. In news we're sure will surprise none of you, the consensus is that Sony's (likely final) villain-led movie is a disastrous disappointment.
While it seems the action is at least passable, even an R-Rating and plenty of blood can't stop this classic Spider-Man foe's solo outing from being worthy of a shallow grave.
The only positives we can find relate to the cast, though the characters themselves appear largely wasted or adapted so poorly that comic book fans will walk away unhappy. We expected Kraven the Hunter to be a mess and, in that respect, Sony has hit the target.
"I’ve seen much worse comic-book movies than 'Kraven the Hunter,'" Variety's critic explains, "but maybe the best way to sum up my feelings about the film is to confess that I didn’t stay to see if there was a post-credits teaser. That’s a dereliction of duty, but it’s one I didn’t commit on purpose. I simply hadn’t bothered to think about it."
The Hollywood Reporter adds, "Overlong and punctuated by anticlimactic kills of one bad guy after another, this looks to follow other entries in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe like Morbius and Madame Web to an early grave."
The Wrap's take is that Kraven the Hunter's "[script] was probably cobbled together via numerous rewrites over various reshoots and ADR sessions [and] never allows this fine cast of actors to convey their characters on their own, and instead stuffs their mouths full of vapid, needless dialogue."
Empire wasn't a fan either. "This all feels a long way from Chandor’s glory days of Margin Call and All Is Lost. Save the occasional flourish, Kraven The Hunter is limp, tired, uninvolving superhero fare," reads the site's review. io9 at least promises that, "Kraven the Hunter [is] better than Madame Web and probably slightly better than Morbius."
Total Film was disappointed but notes, "Though closer in quality to Morbius than Venom, Kraven is far from a catastrophe and serves up a decent helping of bloodthirsty, globe-trotting action."
ScreenDaily calls Kraven the Hunter a "lethargic superhero saga" and Screen Rant's reviewer opines, "I can't in good conscience recommend it, except to those who solely enjoy superhero movies for the action scenes, and particularly if you like bloody and violent R-rated action."
Collider, meanwhile, calls it a "worst-hits compilation of all those movies' mistakes, with the poorly conceived idea of Venom, the barely coherent story of Morbius, and the baffling technical problems of Madame Web."
Finally, IndieWire names it "an action movie that doesn’t take advantage of its R rating until the final shootout, as the CGI devolves from 'adorably cartoonish' to 'done as cheaply as possible by a studio trying to cut its losses' so fast that it comes dangerously close to 'Scorpion King' territory by the end."
Sony must have seen this coming and filmmaker J.C. Chandor's hopes that fans might give Kraven the Hunter a chance are well and truly dashed thanks to these reviews. He's a good director but clearly couldn't overcome the dumb approach the studio took to the character with this unnecessary and unwanted origin story.
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.
Kraven the Hunter arrives in theaters on December 13.