Kraven the Hunter on Canal Plus: is he a good or a bad hunter? (critical)

The director of Margin Call and a Most Violent Year, more a little cool actor (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and the promise of a very brutal r-rated film. It didn’t take more for superhero movies lovers to be fooled one last time?

Kraven The Hunter is broadcast for the first time this Friday on Canal Plus, and available in mycanal streaming. What is JC Chandor’s film worth with Aaron Taylor-Johnson? This is what first said when it was released in the cinema in December 2024:

After Venom, Morbius and Madame Web, we could not miss the announced burial of the (without) Spider-Man universe of Sony. No other film is developing on the side of Columbia Pictures. And Kraven the Hunter is therefore supposed to close this series of disorderly films which expanded to weave links (PUN Intended) to finally disappear six years after its launch.

Like her little friends, Kraven is a super-viilay Nemesis of Spidey in comics. Problem, Sony is not allowed to reveal Tom Holland in these films. Everyone is therefore entitled to his spin-off where he finds himself propelled anti-heroes, facing other bad guys, but they are really mean. The shadow of Peter Parker hovers somewhere but hush, you must not say his name.

The five films released so far have raised $ 2.1 billion at the box office. A deceptive success. The Venom trilogy has inexplicably hit, while Morbius and Madame Web were monumental ovens. But their common point is to have been discharged by criticism. To the point that the director JC Chandor called for the leniency of the fans before the release of Kraven ::

“People have to give us a chance and come and support the film, and literally try to forget certain things that have happened. Give our film a chance.”

The director of Margin Call and a Most violent Year, plus a somewhat cool actor (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and the promise of a very brutal r-rated film. It didn’t take more for superhero movies lovers to be fooled one last time?

Except that even before the release of the film, we were fixed. Ten days before, Sony dropped the first 8 minutes of Kraven the Hunter on the internet. And we could already measure the magnitude of the massacre.

Taking up the false Soviet song of the Red October Pursuit (composed by an American of Greek origin, Basil Poledouris), this opening sequence shows us Kraven to break into a prison to kill a crime baron after a dialogue in post-synchronized Russian anyhow. The tone is set.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-naetwvya8

Kraven regularly borders on ridicule. Like the flashback showing us how young Sergei Kravinoff acquired his powers during a hunting game that went wrong. Mortally wounded by a fabulous lion, Zar, he is saved by a miraculous potion and is endowed with superhuman aptitude thanks to the blood of the beast that got involved in his. He then left to live his life as a wicked hunter, leaving his little brother fragile alone with their father, himself a great criminal.

And it has a strong cabotin for just over 2 hours. Taylor-Johnson, a sympathetic but decidedly mediocre actor, draws his little ironic mine in all circumstances. In line with the Vatican’s exorcist, Russell Crowe (his father), always more gargantuan, seems very proud to have unlocked a new accent. Fred Hechinger (his Frérot) manages to overplay as much as in Gladiator 2. But less than Lessandro Nivola (Rhino, the end boss). And poor Ariana Debose (her sidekick) seems very lost in the middle of all this.

Despite all these efforts, Kraven does not go far enough to switch to the camp or the pure nanar, and offer us the opportunity to savor it in the second degree as Venom. We are simply faced with a discount production, with its ultra basic scenario, its low cost special effects and a completely disembodied staging. Words are missing to describe the power of the abroad (Christopher Abbott), a super-tuper who says “1, 2, 3” before moving furtively to zigillate types.

Apart from a few kindly gore moments (with CGI blood splash), the combat scenes also disappoint, which should have been the strong point of a film on a bestial character like Kraven. But Chandor preferred to make it a protector of animals with a big heart.

Worse, in full denial, the director really designed Kraven as the beginning of a saga, with the introduction of a big villain for the continuation and the unnecessary eye to Spider-Man in case Kevin Feige, taken from dementia, accepts that Tom Holland will immerse himself in this quagmire.

Chandor, let’s talk about it. The beginning of the 2010s, when the first film of the American director carried a certain promise of cinema, seem far away. After triple border, a project abandoned by Kathryn Bigelow who was to go out in the cinema and finally landed on Netflix, he again descends from a notch. Hollywood was still right of an author, and it’s very sad …