Originally published to 8 News Now on December 11, 2024.

If the rumors are true, Kraven the Hunter may mark the end of Sony’s Spider-Man-less villain universe. After entries like Morbius and Madame Web, this experiment has struggled to find critical or commercial footing. With Kraven, the era’s conclusion might feel more like a mercy than a loss, as the film stumbles into a tangle of superhero origin tropes, offering little to distinguish itself.

The screenplay tops the list of things wrong with the middling mess. It is riddled with long, boring stretches of bad dialogue, and other than an initial bust of action in the opening scene, there is little thrill to latch on to. For a film centered on a hunter, there’s surprisingly little hunting. By the time the action picks up again, most viewers will likely feel disconnected from the characters and uninterested in the stakes.

The characters are just as much of a problem. Like Madame Web before it, these capable actors seem to be phoning it in. Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the titular “hunter,” Russel Crowe, Ariana DeBose, and company bring nothing to the screen to elevate what they were given in the screenplay.

“Special” credit must be given to Alessandro Nivola, who has generated at least a “so-bad-it’s-good” performance as Rhino. It’s unclear what he was attempting to do with the character, but at the very least it breaks up the monotony of the rest of the film.

And in the spirit of looking for the positive, Taylor-Johnson got in fantastic shape to play Kraven. And good for him, honestly.

Kraven the Hunter is a dull, cringeworthy entry into a shared Spider-Man universe concept that seemed doomed to failure from the start. Like Madame Web, this movie seems destined to become a footnote in Sony’s Spider-Man-adjacent ambitions—one that, for better or worse, may be remembered more for what it failed to achieve than anything it accomplished.