Film / Kraven the Hunter (2024)

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Kraven the Hunter is a 2024 superhero film based on the comic book character of the same name by Marvel Comics and is the sixth installment of Sony's Spider-Man Universe. It stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson in the title role as well as Ariana DeBose, Russell Crowe, Fred Hechinger and Alessandro Nivola. It is directed by J. C. Chandor.

Russian gangster Nikolai Kravinoff (Crowe) takes his two teenage sons, Sergei and Dmitri, on a hunting trip to Africa as a test of character for Sergei. Everything goes horrifically awry when Sergei is viciously attacked by a lion, only to be saved by a young girl called Calypso, who uses a mystical healing potion to keep Sergei alive. The potion, combined with a drop of the lion's blood that fell into his wounds, grants Sergei superhuman strength, speed and agility, as well as a powerful bond with the animal kingdom. Sergei then spurns his father's legacy and chooses to run away from home, dedicating himself to becoming a far better man than Nikolai.

Years later, the now-adult Sergei (Taylor-Johnson) has become a brutal vigilante who calls himself "Kraven", but is known to the criminal underworld simply as "the Hunter", stalking and eliminating various underworld figures around the globe. His mission becomes complicated, however, when Dmitri (Hechinger) is kidnapped by Alexei "the Rhino" Sytsevich (Nivola), a powerful rival of his father's, forcing Kraven to enlist the help of Calypso (de Bose) - now a criminal lawyer working in London - to help find Dmitri and bring the Rhino to justice.

Originally scheduled for October 6th, 2023, the film released on December 13, 2024. Sony released the first eight minutes of the movie on Youtube on December 2.

Previews: Red-Band Trailer, Trailer 2.

Kraven the Hunter contains examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Can't get more abusive than Nikolai constantly belittling your illegitimate child for being a coward and allowing his favorite son to get dragged off by a lion he didn't kill. At one point, he tries to hit a fully grown Kraven, who simply grabs his hand and tells him he can't do that to him anymore, which confirms that his father was physically abusive.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: In the comics, Kraven was a beefy man with rough facial features. Taylor-Johnson has a leaner build with youthful good looks.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • While some versions give Kraven superhuman powers, he typically relies on chemicals and herbs to enhance his physical abilities to a level where he can fight characters like Spider-Man. Here, he gains his powers by ingesting a single healing potion which, combined with his blood mixing with that of a lion, grants him abilities that are more on par with Black Panther.
  • Rhino is also shown to be superhuman in this version as opposed to being a normal guy in a suit of some sort, being able to transform into a giant half-rhino creature as a result of participating in a secret experiment designed to grant him enormous strength.
• Adaptational Backstory Change: In the comics, Kraven's family fled to the United States during the February Revolution in 1917, he being the son of an aristocrat who seemingly treated him well before growing up to became a world-famous big game hunter. The 2023 comic The Lost Hunt also fleshed out his backstory to explain that his villainy and madness, as well as his decision to become a hunter, were influenced by a failed Wakandan ritual that was supposed to help him confront his personal demons. The film gives him an Age Lift and turns his father into an Abusive Parent who belittles his younger brother. It was only when Nikolai allowed Sergei to get dragged off by a lion by showing "weakness" in not killing the beast that Sergei washed his hands of his father and becomes a vigilante hunting those in his father's business.
• Adaptational Heroism: Calypso, since in the comics she was a psychopath who encouraged Kraven's rage and hatred of Spider-Man. Here, she's a Crusading Lawyer who's largely opposed to Kraven's methods, at least for pragmatic reasons.
• Adaptational Relationship Overhaul: Calypso was introduced as Kraven's ally and his lover, and was supportive of his hatred for Spider-Man. In the film, she starts off as a fairly-reluctant ally, before agreeing to help him find Dmitri, but she still maintains that she thinks Kraven is insane, and there is no hint of a romantic relationship between them.
• Adaptational Villainy: Nikolai was a pretty minor character in the comics, but Kraven never says he was a bad parent in any way. But the film depicts him as a Social Darwinist and Control Freak who refuses to have "weak" sons.
• Age Lift: In the comics, Kraven was born during the early 20th century and extended his lifespan though chemicals and potions. In the film, young Kraven seem to be set closer to the present, implying that Kraven looks his age and is therefore much younger in this version.
• Always Know a Pilot: Kraven seemingly has a cargo plane pilot on permanent retainer. She picks him after the assassination in the prison at the start of the film, and he later sends her to pick up Calypso in England and fly her to Russia.
• A Minor Kidroduction: Invoked and subverted - 16 years ago, Kraven and Calypso did end up together in the same hunting ground, where she gave him the serum while his wounds were tainted by the blood of a lion, but he'd gone comatose from the lion attack at the time and never even saw her face. Eventually he finds her on his own using just the tarot card she left with him. Really.
• Animal-Themed Superbeing:
  • Aleksei Sytsevich, known as the Rhino because he had himself genetically modified by a New York scientist to harden his skin while using a serum to keep him from a painful transformation into a full-blown rhino humanoid.
  • Though he doesn't officially adopt the name, Dmitri uses the help of Aleksei's benefactor to become the shapeshifter known as the Chameleon.
• Artistic Licence – Law: During a visit to Calypso’s London-based legal offices, Kraven is threatened with an electric stun-gun by a security guard. In the U.K., not only are security guards prohibited from carrying weapons while on duty, but stun guns and tasers are illegal for civilians to even possess, so it is highly unlikely that a guard at a British law firm would be waving one around in the workplace.
• Ascended Extra: Although Kraven's father is a pretty minor character in the comics, he plays a large role in the film and is eventually revealed as the Greater-Scope Villain of the story.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Kraven is finally able to defeat the Rhino by attacking the only weak point in his invulnerable skin: the stent in his side where the feed bags that supply the serum that keeps him human attach.
• Awful Truth: Kraven's battle with the Foreigner forces him to remember that his mother was genuinely mentally ill rather than that being a lie his father made to get her out of the way.
• Badass in Distress: Although he is shown to be an extremely capable fighter, in the climax of the movie, Kraven is poisoned and overpowered by The Foreigner and would be killed were it not for the timely intervention of Calypso.
• Bad with the Bone: Kraven kills Semyon Chorney with a fang he rips from the skull of a tiger skin rug.
• Bloodier and Gorier: The first (and only) SSU film to have an R rating. The film uses this to actually show blood as Kraven kills his enemies, which the previous films noticeably lacked despite being about antiheroes fighting monstrous villains.
• Bookends:
  • At the beginning of the movie, Calypso saves Kraven's life by giving him her grandmother's potion after he is attacked by the lion; at the end, she saves it again with the same potion after he is almost killed by The Foreigner.
  • While listening to his father's speech about becoming a legend by hunting down a lion, Sergei amuses Nikolai as a hypocrite for relying on weapons and not his natural talents. In his final meeting with his father, Sergei left Nikolai without any ammunition as his father meets a grisly end.
• Dark and Troubled Past: While Kraven has a sad backstory in the comics, his family fleeing the February Revolution while his mother went insane, the film depicts him being raised by a criminal Social Darwinist father who abandoned his mother to die in an asylum and constantly belittles his half brother for being a coward. And that was before his father provoked a lion that Sergei did not kill, getting mauled by the wounded animal with his father letting the beast drag him off.
• Evil Poacher: Kraven discovers a gang of evil poachers slaughtering herds of buffalo on the sanctuary he inherited from his mother and just taking the horns while leaving the rest of the carcasses. He kills the poachers and then tracks their boss back to London.
• Eye Scream: The Foreigner is killed by Calypso firing an arrow through his eye.
• Finger in the Mail: Dmitri's kidnappers send his father his finger, complete with Dmitri's distinctive ring still on the finger.
• Fingore: Aleksei severs Dmitri’s finger and sends it to Nikolai.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Kraven boasts to Calypso that he is the greatest hunter there is and that he is unstoppable and untouchable, which prompts her to warn him about karma coming to bite him in the ass. His eventual confrontation with The Foreigner has him being utterly trounced and almost killed by his opponent - requiring Calypso to save him from death one more time. And even his victory over Rhino does not come easily, as Kraven ends up taking quite the damage in the process and has to exploit Aleksei's Achilles' Heel to stand a chance.
  • When The Foreigner enters Aleksei's hideout by using his abilities on his guards, an annoyed Sytsevich asks him if ripping his eyes out would undo his powers. Calypso kills the Foreigner with an arrow to his eye.
  • Dmitri's Voice Changeling ability and desire to metaphorically become another person all foreshadow his eventual transformation into The Chameleon.
• Genre Shift: Kraven originated as a villain from an urban superhero comic, while this film is more akin to a mafia/gangster movie featuring an antihero.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Perhaps as evidence that the film was not originally intended to be rated R, Kraven remarks to Rhino mid-fight, "Gosh, you're heavy!"
• GPS Evidence: When the Foreigner discovers that Kraven uses rosary bead peas to make his poison darts, he is able to narrow down Kraven's base of operation to a small area of northern Russia.
• Honor Thy Abuser: After Kraven ran away from home, Dmitri became the sole target of Nikolai's emotional abuse, it leads to Dmitri seeking his father approbation and taking over the criminal empire while being angry at Kraven for killing him.
• "Inescapable" Prison Easily Escaped; When Kraven arrives in the Russian prison in the middle of Siberia, he ells his cellmate Mofo he will be gone in three days, to Mofo's amusement. Within three days, he has killed Semyon Chorney and escaped. Of course, Kraven was posing as someone else and the prison probably wasn't designed to hold someone with Kraven's powers.
• In Name Only: Calypso has very little in common with the comic version, who was a voodoo priestess born and raised in Haiti and encouraged Kraven's worst and most rageful acts. The film version is an American lawyer with West African ancestry who disliked Kraven's violent actions, who wants to work with her in hunting down criminals.
• It Works Better with Bullets. At the end of the film, Nikolai is attacked by a bear. He grabs his rifle and tries to shoot only to find it empty. The bear leaps on him as he struggles to reload. Kraven, walking away from the camp, opens his hand and drops a handful of shells in the snow.
• Javelin Thrower: Part of Kraven's skill set. He kills a mook in Omer Aksoy's helicopter by throwing a length of rebar at him with enough force that it enters his chest and emerges from his back.
• Luxury Prison Suite: Kraven visits the prison cell of an arms dealer who has a fridge, chess board, tiger skin rug, and TV.
• Man Bites Man: Kraven bites off a man's nose and spit it out.
• Moe Greene Special: Calypso kills the Foreigner by nailing him through the eye with an arrow as he is about to shoot Kraven.
• Moody Trailer Cover Song: The second trailer is accompanied by a dramatic remix of Johnny Cash's "The Man Comes Around".
• Mugged for Disguise: Kraven kills prisoner #0864 and steals his uniform so he can take his place on the prisoner transport.
• Mythology Gag:
  • During a hallucination, Kraven imagines that he is surrounded by a large number of spiders.
  • Kraven poses as a prisoner he murdered whose number is #0864, a reference to the date of the first comic Kraven debuted in, The Amazing Spider-Man #15, which was released on August 1964. 08/64.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Aaron Taylor-Johnson doesn't use a Russian accent when playing Kraven, switching between an American one and his natural British one. Justified, since in this version, Kraven is the son of a Russian gangster who lives in London, and spent most of his childhood in an American boarding school.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: During the chase, Kraven bellows this in Aaron Taylor-Johnson's normal British accent.
  Kraven: Get the fuck out of the way!
• Outside Ride: When Dmitri is kidnapped, Kraven winds up clinging to the outside of the kidnappers' vehicle as he tries to punch his way in.
• Pinned to the Wall: Kraven shoots the Evil Poacher Andre with a crossbow and the bolt lifts him of his feet and pins him to the door. When Kraven closes the other door on his way out, it is revealed that Andre's boss had met the same fate.
• Prequel: One of the official synopses says it's "set before Kraven's notorious vendetta with Spider-Man".
• Precision F-Strike: By Calypso as a Bond One-Liner after killing Foreigner.
• Shirtless Scene: Kraven often appears shirtless, especially when he is grown into an adult.
• Shout-Out: The opening scene is set to the “Hymn to Red October”.
• Slouch of Villainy: See the above poster. It's also the closing shot of the film.
• The Social Darwinist: Kraven's father abandoned his mentally ill wife, calling her weak. He extends this treatment to his sons, constantly belittling Dmitri for being a coward and letting a lion he wounded drag off a near dead Sergei for not killing the beast.
• Sunglasses at Night: Because the Foreigner's powers rely on him making eye contact with his target, he always wears sunglasses (or snow goggles in one scene) and only removes them when activating his powers.
• Super Serum: Kraven gains his powers from a mystical healing potion given to him by Calypso, who was bequeathed it by her grandmother, combined with some of the lion Tsar's blood mingling with his own.
• Trailers Always Spoil: Dmitri's line dismissing Kraven of just being another man hunting for a trophy, is actually from the epilogue, revealing that Kraven is now a Broken Pedestal for Dmitri.
• Two Shots from Behind the Bar: During the attempted hit on Nikolai Kravinoff at Dmitri's club, the bartender pulls a submachine gun out from under the bar and starts blasting.
• Wham Shot: In the epilogue, Dmitri is walking away from Kraven who catches up to him and places a hand on his shoulder, prompting Dmitri to spin around, revealing himself to now have Kraven's face. He promptly walks away again, his face shifting into the iconic blank white face of the Chameleon before returning to Dmitri, revealing he is now a shapeshifter.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Under the effects of the Foreigner's drug, Kraven's greatest fear is revealed to be spiders; seemingly connected to his mother's insanity, as she used to hallucinate about spiders.
• You Are What You Hate: Despite Kraven accusing his father of simply bringing evil to the world, Dmitri says that he is like their father in being a man hunting for a trophy.