This Marvel movie sucks-ski.
When “Venom” came out, I despised it, but it became a box office hit and created two better sequels (which isn’t saying much). When “Morbius” came out, the only thing interesting about it was the Matt Smith villain, while the rest of it sucked (pun intended). And when “Madame Web” came out, I already believe it’s the worst comic book movie I have seen, and there are some pretty bad ones (it can’t even predict it would later end up on my annual Worst of the Year list).
Now, the latest Marvel film distributed by Sony Pictures,” “Kraven the Hunter,” has just been released. And allow me to make a distinction.
Earlier this year, Aaron Taylor-Johnson was perfectly cast as the action movie star in “The Fall Guy,” who didn’t do his own stunts and was revealed to be a bad guy. In “Kraven the Hunter,” he plays the title character with his real identity Sergei Kravinoff. He’s basically the only good thing about the film with his attitude and consistency, while everything else is overlong with its pointless story, overblown with bad CGI effects, and not very entertaining with its results. It may not be as headache inducing as “Madame Web,” but it still doesn’t speak to me. And out all the fights in the film, the one was most comical to me was when some bad guys video camera what they think is Kraven’s corpse. They say: “We got Kraven,” but he says: “I don’t think so.”
As the film begins, Sergei survives a lion attack as a boy (Levi Miller) thanks its blood dropping in his wound and a young girl named Calypso (Diaana Babnicova) using a voodoo potion to save him. His crime lord father Nikolai (Russell Crowe), who wants him to be a hunter like him, criticizes him for not killing that lion and intends to make him stronger. But he has the good sense and new powers to run away makes it his life mission to kill crime lords and hunters. He can leap tall trees in a single bound. Just kidding. But he can jump pretty high and survive certain falls like an animal. A trampoline can give us better effects than this movie could.
Ariana DeBose plays the now adult Calypso, who is now a lawyer in London and reunites with Sergei, whom he now calls himself Kraven. Of course she has to be the one to tell him that he’ll “need a lawyer or someone worse.” And when she says: “I don’t like the feel of this at all,” that’s Razzie-level acting there.
We also have Nikolai now bullying his other son Dimitri (Fred Hechinger), while caught in a war with another crime lord known as the Rhino (Alessandro Nivola). Unlike the Paul Giamatti character in “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” he doesn’t have a mechanical suit. He becomes a human-rhino hybrid with CGI giving him a hand. Let’s say he would be immediately rejected in a “Fantastic Four” audition. But Kraven must save his brother from the bad guys, since his dad refuses to pay his ransom for the sake of his own reputation.
Oh, and the Rhino has an assassin named the Foreigner (Christopher Abbott), who has his own physical ways of taking out his targets. Don’t ask me what do I mean by that, because I don’t write comic books or screenplays. Just reviews.
“Kraven the Hunter” was directed by JC Chandor, who has made four brilliant movies: “Margin Call,” “All is Lost,” “A Most Violent Year,” and “Triple Frontier.” His latest entry, however, is a different story. People have wanted an R-rated “Venom” sequel for years, but that rating goes to this movie. But if this was PG-13, it still would bore you. Marvel and Sony, you’re done working together.