Sometimes, a movie gets released that’s so bad you know someone at the studio lost their job, and the filmmaker will probably end up in director’s jail for a few years. When that same studio releases three movies in the same universe that are so insanely, preposterously stupid (while also hemorrhaging money) that they become instantly meme’d to the point of full cultural saturation… then they’re in the situation that Sony finds itself in right now. It’s pretty hilarious.
Sony owns the rights to Spider-Man, so starting with Andrew Garfield’s “The Amazing Spider-Man,” it had planned to build a shared universe after witnessing the success Marvel Studios was having with Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and The Avengers. But after the flop of “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” Sony decided to rent out the wall crawler to Marvel (which got us the Tom Holland Spidey movies) and then pivoted to using Spider-Man’s rogues gallery to launch the new Sony’s Spider-Man Universe. It was a decent idea that has been executed incredibly, job-losingly poorly.
In the SSU, we were “gifted” six movies since 2018. Three of those movies were the “Venom” trilogy, which are pretty fun, feature a wonderfully unhinged performance from Tom Hardy and, compared to the other three movies in the SSU, are downright masterpieces. The Jared Leto stinker “Morbius” came in 2022 along with the “It’s Morbin Time” meme, which I suppose justifies the film’s existence but still doesn’t make it a watchable movie. However, 2024 has been the worst for the beleaguered Sony. First came the hilariously terrible “Madame Web,” which feels made by people who have never seen a movie before, but also gave us Dakota Johnson’s forever iconic line reading of: “He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died.”
Last weekend saw the release of “Kraven the Hunter,” the sixth (and almost certainly final) entry into Sony’s Spider-Man Universe — a movie so terrible that not only is it easily the worst of the series, but it wasn’t even terrible in an interesting enough way to generate a single meme, let alone be worthy of a serious film discussion. It’s boring, filled with sub-2007 special effects, has bad action scenes (which is the one thing it kinda needed to get right) and is sporting one of the worst scripts I’ve ever had the displeasure of sitting through.
In the comics, Kraven is an insanely rich Russian big-game hunter who becomes obsessed with hunting Spider-Man, considering him to be the most dangerous game of all. In the first comic book I ever bought (all the way back in 1987), Kraven shoots Spidey with a tranquilizer and buries him alive for two weeks. It’s one of the best Spider-Man stories of all time and cements Kraven as one of the deadliest villains the web-slinger has ever crossed.
So, imagine my surprise while watching the film when we learn that Kraven’s characteristics of being rich and Russian are the only things he has in common with his comic counterpart. In the SSU, Kraven the character is actually a conservationist, protecting animals and only hunting bad guys to murder them. Technically, he’s a serial killer, but they play him as a total hero (not even a little anti), protecting animals, women and children like it’s going out of style, while still murdering hundreds of armed and unarmed villains in cold blood.
Honestly, the movie has nothing to do with the comics but, even if it did, that wouldn’t have made it any better. You can tell director J. C. Chandor had no interest in the character, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson (even with swagger to spare) sleepwalks through the role, just focusing on cool poses and looking shredded. He’s thirsty to play James Bond and that thirst is self-evident in every frame of the film.
While Sony managed to knock it out of the park with the animated “Spider-Verse” films (which it will ride until the wheels fall off), “Kraven the Hunter” is so terrible that it seems like the SSU is as buried as Spider-Man was after crossing paths with Kraven in the comics — and that’s a good thing. As fun as it is to make fun of horrible schlock, I would much rather watch something that enriches my heart and mind… or at least can explode things in cool ways for 90 minutes. I’m an easy mark. But not this easy.
This article appears in Source Weekly December 19, 2024.
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