Kraven The Hunter Trailer and Poster Start Their Hunt
The next Spider-Man villain movie without Spider-Man is on its way. Sony has released a red band trailer and poster for Kraven The Hunte. Kraven The Hunter follows Sergei Kravinoff, the son of a gangster who develops animalistic abilities and hunts down evildoers – at least, that’s as much as I can make out from this trailer. Kraven The Hunter stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Kraven, with Russell Crowe, Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola, and Christopher Abbott in supporting roles. Directed by JC Chandor, Kraven The Hunter will arrive in theaters on October 6, 2023. You can see the trailer (which is a red band and not safe for work) and poster below:
In terms of adapting the character, I’m not sure how accurate Kraven The Hunter is, at least based on the trailer. I’ve only read his first couple of appearances in the early Amazing Spider-Man comics, and I imagine they went into more detail later. I don’t recall him being the son of a gangster if they even got into his family. The trailer seems to indicate that he gets his power from a lion’s blood, which is definitely a change if it happens; he gets it from a serum of some sort in the comics. But this isn’t necessarily how he gets his powers in the movie; maybe it’s just symbolic. I’m not sure if Aaron Taylor-Johnson would’ve been my first choice to play Kraven, either; he’s a fine actor, and he looks good in the action scenes in the trailer, but he doesn’t have quite the presence or menace for Kraven. And he doesn’t seem to be attempting a Russian accent, possibly because director JC Chandor saw Age of Ultron, but it’s kind of a part of Kraven. The poster looks great, though.
Taken on its own, however, Kraven The Hunter looks pretty good. I like that they went harder than normal with the action, and Kraven is pretty brutal when dealing with his enemies. The tag lines on the screen suggest this is a villain origin story, which feels unnecessary – if they could do the Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, the Vulture, and Mysterio in single movies, they can do Kraven and Venom. (I will say this makes more sense for Kraven than it does for Venom because the latter’s origin, powers, and raison d’être are tied directly to Spider-Man.) It also runs the risk of making these characters too sympathetic; a villain with humanity and shades of gray is fine, but when you’ve spent an entire film cheering him on, it undermines his menace a bit when he faces Spidey. They seem to be introducing a few of Spider-Man’s rogues in this one; the final line is someone calling himself the Rhino. It’ll be cool if they make it into an actual Spider-Man movie at some point.
