The Spidey Universe of Cinematic Killers mission at Sony, commonly known as SUCKS, is complete. Venom has been unleashed, some profits have been made, the character license has been renewed, and Dakota Johnson has successfully avoided drinking a Pepsi. This means that Kraven – you know Kraven? Kraven the hunter? – introduces a lame term. Kraven the Hunterthe film, and the character, are cursed to wander the Earth, but especially the outskirts of Russia, where they spawn sequels and/or distractions and/or inexplicable grudges against Spider-Man that will probably never be fulfilled, at least not with the franchise Nomad Aaron Taylor-Johnson in a role that he once hoped would become his signature role.

As with Venom and Morbius, freeing Kraven from the conflict with Spider-Man means, above all, that he transforms from a real supervillain into a semi-typical antihero – an overpowered guy who kills thugs without remorse, but mostly for just reasons. If anything, this version of Kraven is even more sincere than his predecessors in SUCKS, who at least nominally struggle with monstrous urges. Taylor-Johnson’s Kraven, aka Sergei, is more human: The son of Russian gangster Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe, resplendent in his accented muttonliness), he is attacked by a lion on one of his father’s signature big-game hunts. Through this teenage mishap he also meets Calypso for the first time, who becomes his childhood sweetheart – in the sense that she anonymously gives him the magic potion that saves his life and, mixed with the lion’s blood, gives him super-strong, glowing eyes unspoken kinship with other mammals and agility in wall climbing. (You know, like a lion.)

Disgusted with his father and armed with his newfound powers, Sergei runs away from home, leaving his mild-mannered half-brother Dmitri (Fred Hechinger) to deal with Nikolai’s inconveniences. Eventually, Sergei adopts the vigilante identity of Kraven, hunting the very criminals his father is associated with and regularly checking on his lounge-singing brother (a suspiciously gifted copycat; hmm…). When rival gangster Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola), nicknamed Rhino to avoid beating around the bush, goes after Dmitri, Rhino moves high up on Kraven’s kill list. For reasons unclear, Kraven also enlists the help of Calypso (Ariana DeBose) in tracking down villains, although he boasts that no one can do it better than him.

It doesn’t seem that hard because while the settings of Kraven the Hunter Although the film’s world is far away, including Ghana, Siberia, and London, it is relatively small and Kraven doesn’t necessarily intend to save it. He’s the son of a gangster who mostly kills other gangsters, and this seedy crime family milieu suits the seedy director JC Chandor quite well. In fact, in what is by far the biggest twist in the SUCKS story, it turns out that if you can move away from the behind-the-scenes question of whether a superhero movie that’s unlikely to inspire sequels will definitely become pointless (always a point of contention for the contemporary comic nerd). ), Kraven the Hunter is a lot of fun.