The first Kraven the Hunter reviews were published earlier today and a Rotten Tomatoes score has just been generated. As we write this, 42 verdicts have been counted, and the movie sits at a painfully low 14%.
While far from a surprise, the hope had been that the movie might exceed expectations given its impressive cast and the fact J.C. Chandor is at the helm.
We're assuming he's not much of a comic book fan because any filmmaker who read this script and thought it did right by Kraven...well, let's just say that no one familiar with the villain would give this one the thumbs up.
The movie was hit with several delays, so the studio may have made many changes in that time. Morbius, for example, was butchered in post-production and its third act was completely reshot. As of now, we don't know if Kraven the Hunter faced similar difficulties.
"I'm not going to fool anyone to think that all of those movies were the success that everyone wanted them to be," Chandor recently said. "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."
With 14%, Kraven the Hunter at least has some company; Madame Web is rated 11% and Morbius fared slightly better with a 15% score. The Venom franchise fared a little better with critics, with Venom (30%), Venom: Let There Be Carnage (58%), and Venom: The Last Dance (41%).
You have to give Sony credit: the studio has now delivered six consistent critical flops since 2018. It's no wonder then that Sony's Spider-Man Universe is reportedly "dead."
The sad thing is that this likely means Kraven will be shelved indefinitely. Fans have spent years waiting to see him battle the wall-crawler on screen, but even an adaptation of Kraven's Last Hunt with a new actor would struggle to attract moviegoers who will be all too aware of this surely-guaranteed flop.
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.