The first trailer for Kraven the Hunter was a little vague about how the titular character (Aaron Taylor Johnson) got his powers, suggesting that Kraven somehow gained super strength and agility after being bitten by a lion.
Sony Pictures has now released a new TV spot for the next SSU movie, and it shows some kind of liquid being poured into a young Kraven's mouth after the attack.
Does this mean Kraven's father was in possession of a serum that grants incredible abilities? Probably! Who knows with this franchise.
There seems to be slightly more anticipation for this latest Spider-Man-less Spider-Man spin-off, if for no other reason than the R-rating potentially providing some visceral thrills.
The first 8 minutes of the movie were recently screened during New York Comic-Con, and the sequence featured Kraven stalking and killing multiple foes in a prison. The violence was said to be surprisingly gruesome, and a second clip with "multiple very brutal kills" including murder by bear trap, axe, and tree stump - which reportedly splits someone straight down the middle - was also shown.
"He's an apex predator, the top of the food chain," said star Aaron Taylor-Johnson during the panel. "Kraven's a hunter, not a poacher. Like every hunter knows, sometimes you have to cull the herd to preserve order. Of course, when he starts applying that to human beings, it becomes a pretty dark story."
“It’s not just Kraven. We’ve really gotten an opportunity to dive into the Marvel characters in a really cool way,” added director J.C. Chandor. “We wanted to have the spirit of those characters be what fans want and also bring it to the screen in a new way… We’ve walked a tonal balance where myself as a storyteller and as the director, I know the actors in every performance, we’re not breaking the fourth wall. We believe in this story like it was really happening.”
"When you get in those books. It’s pretty, pretty intense," said the filmmaker of the movie's much-discussed R rating. "When the studio gave us the opportunity to see if we wanted to do this as an R[-rated] film, we were like, yes,” he said. “It was an amazing opportunity. It sort of opened up some really intense kind of Grindhouse stuff on one side, and then some also really intense character stuff.”
“Kraven the Hunter is the visceral story about how and why one of Marvel’s most iconic villains came to be. Set before his notorious vendetta with Spider-Man, Aaron Taylor-Johnson stars as the titular character in the R-rated film.”
Kraven the Hunter is an upcoming American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name, produced by Columbia Pictures in association with Marvel Entertainment. Distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing, it is intended to be the sixth film in Sony's Spider-Man Universe (SSU). The film was directed by J. C. Chandor and written by Art Marcum, Matt Holloway, and Richard Wenk.
In addition to Aaron Taylor-Johnson in the title role, Ariana DeBose will play Calypso, a voodoo priestess and Kraven's on-off love interest (in the comics, at least); Fred Hechinger is Dmitri Smerdyakov, aka the Chameleon, who is Kraven's half-brother; Alessandro Nivola will play Aleksei Sytsevich, aka the Rhino, and Christopher Abbott will portray another villain known as the Foreigner.
Sony's next "SMU" movie has been rated R for "Strong bloody violence, and language."