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.
Rottentomatoes Rating
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.
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.
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.
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