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Last night I sat down and finally watch Kraven The Hunger (2024), the last movie Sony release that relates to their own Spider Verse Universe that to be hones they didn't know how to exploit with so much potential, sure the movie isn't winning any awards and the plot feels a bit messy and inconclusive, but I had a good time watching Aaron Taylor Johnson bring Kraven to life , the movie delivers some solid action sequences with an R rating that makes it interesting enough to keep you interested until the end, even when the plot isn't as bad as everyone made it out to be.
What's interesting about this movie is that they took a different route with the classic Marvel villain than we've seen before, instead of going with the ruthless hunter we know from the comics, Sergei Kravinoff in this movie is presented as more of an anti hero who actually does care about animals and nature, which might be consider by the more pure fans as bad but its the entertaining side of things trying to adapt to make it commercial, somehow works for the story they are trying to tell.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8790086/
- Platform: Amazon Prime Video
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The first part of the movie sets a certain toxic masculinity environment and only the strong survive that you would expect from this kind of story, but things get interesting when Sergei gets hurt and thrown around by a lion in Tanzania and ends up with supernatural abilities due to a mysterious potion and the lion's blood mix, I dunno it sounds silly but at this point we've had worse comic book movie origins, the potion was giving to him by Calypso a young girl close to him at the moment, she saw him been drag by the Lion while she was in a Safari with her parents, for some reason she felt he need to be safe, when she got close they Lion just left Sergei almost dead when she gave him the potion, a family secret potion her grand mother gave her.
From here on Sergei life starts to change after he comes back from defeating death, he attempts to get away from his father's criminal empire as he felt know he has a purpose but it was just a hunch, he also wanted to protect his brother Dmitri from his father's abuse but at the moment there was not much he could do, after he discover his new powers he start to use them to get rid of people just like his father in some pretty violent ways, the R rating could apply just to a few scenes to be honest, some with creative and brutal kills that wouldn't look out of place in a horror movie, but just a few.
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Sergei has to eventually fight a man who his father once underestimate and disrespect to the point he felt like he was nothing, his name Aleksei Sytsevich played by Alessandro Nivola, who called himself the Rhino for a mutation power he could only control by keeping a 24 hours doses of certain serum, and a mysterious assassin called the Foreigner who has some time manipulation powers which are never really explained, probably one of the biggest problems of the movie, but does lead to some very cool action sequences, although the fact there is no context totally ruins the character.
Aaron Taylor Johnson brings a lot of speed and muscle to the role and makes the action scenes feel intense and brutal, even if the script doesn't give them enough time to really develop the chemistry between them and the rest of the cast, specially Fred Hechinger who plays the adult version of Dmitri, their brother, who at the end kind of start enjoying violence after he gets his finger cut off during his kidnap.
Russell Crowe probably had some fun as Nikolai with his thick Russian accent and delivering absurd lines about strength and legacy with such conviction as he is so sure he cant be touch like he is always steps ahead of everyone even Kraven, Alessandro Nivola as the Rhino also had some moments of glory within the movie, providing some badly needed entertainment as how crazy some times he acts, like the moments he talk to his dog I truly though he was going to smash the poor thing, even if sometimes he seems over the top it for sure plays out of place with the movie’s tone.
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Unfortunately only a few characters stand out same goes for the actors in the cast, especially Ariana DeBose as Calypso who feels particularly flat in her delivery, for someone who has been praised on previous movies this time she seems lost in a role that also felt flat, her character is reduced to being basically a lawyer who just happens to have a magic potion nothing more than that, this is proven when she kills The Foreigner with an arrow to his eye and safe Kraven, who himself was surprise but after that no context when you would though she also get some of the action.
Here comes the worst, the technical aspects of the movie are its biggest issues, the CGI animals look cartoonish and fake, especially during action scenes, the movie went through some re shoots and last minute changes, some scenes don’t quite work same goes for transitions, with time jumps and going from one to another place in a blink of an eye.
The ending kinda brings everything together, I say kinda because there are still the problems I mention above with certain characters with almost no context, sort of predictable but satisfying when it comes to Sergei having to fight both the Rhino and the Foreigner to save his brother from the criminal empire run by his father, yes his father was the one behind everything, action in the final part step it up with some good hand to hand combat scenes and a forest sequence that makes the best use of Kraven's hunting skills. We finally see Aleksei transform into the Rhino and a heavy CGI that was a bit baller in plain day light but fun final battle, we also get to see Dmitri begin to show signs of Chameleon with some shape shifting abilities that play during the climax, but this is probably the biggest cliffhanger since we will probably never see any of them again as Sony is still unsure if to reboot the hole thing or sell the rights to Marvel. On recent news they even blame the audience instead of taking responsibility of their failure, I can understand there are some haters of Sony for trying to "take" from Marvel but if the movies were good enough for sure at least they would all get 7 and up on ratings.
While it may not be what comic fans wanted from a Kraven adaptation, the movie is a good action film with some good performances and enough entertainment to consider an OK one time watch, at least is better than Morbius to be hones, and it is clear Sony's Spider Man Universe hasn't quite figured out its footing yet, at least they tried something different with this one and with a more violent and mature approach that makes it different from the usual superhero. Kraven The Hunter might be Sony's last attempt at these spinoffs but with their successful Spider-Verse movies and potential projects with Tom Holland's Spider Man, it seems like they are moving away from these spinoffs to focus on that instead, maybe in a few years this movies were the experiments that could set up the platform to give it a try again, so you can tell I enjoy the movie for what it is so I gave it a 6.5/10 even though it has all this CGI issues and flat performance from some of the characters.
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