There is a scene in J.C. Chandor’s slovenly superhero thriller “Kraven the Hunter” wherein the ab-tastic title character (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) explains his superhero name to the casually overwhelmed Calypso (Ariana DeBose). His real name is Sergei Kravinoff, but he has become such a notorious assassin among the Russian mob that he has earned the mythical nickname of “The Hunter.” He also explains that one can indeed call him Sergei, but that he prefers Kraven. “With a K,” he says. It’s one of the douchiest things any superhero or supervillain has said in a mainstream blockbuster, including the two that starred Jared Leto. 

But then, Taylor-Johnson somehow gets away with it. The actor infuses the absurd character of Kraven with such a brash confidence, that we kind of forgive his off-putting arrogance. As we see throughout the film, Kraven is so capable a killer, and dispatches bad guys with such aplomb, that his arrogance is well-deserved. This is not a superhero story about an arrogant youth learning humility, but a supervillain story of an arrogant a-hole who is charming and handsome enough (complete with an impressive 8-pack) to remain arrogant. You want to hate Kraven, but you kind of can’t. 

Sadly, the film around the title hero is hot garbage. “Kraven the Hunter” is an incoherent, incompetent gallimaufry of worn-down superhero tropes that have been hastily shoved toward an audience the filmmakers know they’ve long ago lost. The writing is bad. The editing is bad. In some scenes, one cannot understand the dialogue through a combination of bad sound and Moose-and-Squirrel-level Russian accents. In one of the film’s many, many exposition dumps, Ariana DeBose seemingly had her mouth digitally manipulated to deliver new dialogue. 

But, like “Madame Web,” the badness of “Kraven” — paired with the blustering confidence of the lead character — lends it a certain kind of whimsical, let’s-all-have-a-chuckle charm. “Kraven” sucks, but one can still have a good time. Many of the critics at my screening were certainly having a ball laughing at the movie.

“Kraven the Hunter” is the latest — and likely last — in a series of Sony-produced superhero movies to feature ancillary Spider-Man villains, joining notorious duds like “Venom: The Last Dance,” “Madame Web,” and “Morbius.” After “Kraven,” the Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters (or SPUMC) will likely be halted. This is the way a genre ends. Not with a bang, but a scene of Aaron Taylor-Johnson wrestling a leopard.

And, oh Lord, there’s a lot of ground to cover. Kraven is the son of a Russian mobster named Nikolai, played by Russell Crowe trying to lend a shred of personality to a pretty generic character. Nikolai has insisted that his two sons Sergei and Dmitri (Levi Miller and Billy Barratt as teens, Taylor-Johnson and Fred Hechinger as adults) remain strong at all times, and a measurable portion of the film’s script is devoted to rants about dominance and strength. When the boys’ mother dies by suicide, Nikolai’s first action is to take the kids on a hunting trip to Ghana to shoot animals and learn about blood and … strength.

During said hunt, Sergei is attacked by a super-lion, dragged across the plains, and randomly deposited in front of Calypso, an American teen in Africa with her parents. Thanks to a lengthy, lengthy exposition dump from her grandmother, audiences know that Calypso possesses a vial of magical life-giving elixir, which she immediately gives to the wounded Nikolai. The elixir mixes with some lion blood in Nikolai’s wounds, and he springs back to life, now possessed of lion-like strength, cat-like agility, enhanced vision, and the ability to climb buildings with his lion-like kung-fu grip. 

In what can only be considered a small mercy, Kraven’s superpowers are understandable from the jump. His super-strength is used to bend prison bars, and his agility helps him perform a kind of supra-parkour. Kraven can run superfast, but only quickly enough to catch up to fleeing cars. While “Kraven” does contain a “testing out superpowers” scene common to its genre, it does not have a scene where Kraven needs to explain his powers to another person. They’re clear, grounded, and speak for themselves. One should be grateful for the filmmaker’s directness. 

Kraven moves away from his abusive father and into a remote geodesic dome in Africa. He spends his days bonding with the with local fauna and violently murdering poachers. He occasionally treks back to the big city or even into Russian prisons to murder the people who might hire said poachers. The film’s opening sequence is a pretty fun prison infiltration sequence that culminates with a gangster getting a tiger fang in his jugular. Kraven loves the animals. 

Nothing else is direct, however. The film’s over-complicated plot involves a nerdy Russian wannabe gangster named Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola) who, if he doesn’t take magical drugs, begins to transform into a tough-skinned monster. He calls himself the Rhino. The Rhino aims to kidnap Dmitri, who, himself, has masterful mimicry abilities, and sometimes calls himself a Chameleon. Also mixed up in this mess is an assassin who only calls himself the Foreigner (Christopher Abbott) who can either hypnotize people or supernaturally slow down time. Either way, his power seems to be the ability to move around behind his targets really quickly. 

Calypso also reappears, now played by DeBose, to offer … almost nothing. Poor DeBose is saddled with some of the worst exposition in any movie, and cannot make it sound graceful.

At least there’s a scene of Kraven rasslin’ — and cussing at — a leopard when it attacks him for no good reason. The leopard scene is delightfully bonkers. Also, “Kraven” gets a lot of mileage from its R-rating; when people get stabbed, there are spurts of CGI arterial spray.

Some of the above characters will be familiar to Spider-Man fans, but really, who cares anymore? The notion of an interconnected cinematic superhero universe drove mainstream cinema for the better part of a decade, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe used such a structure to stand astride the world like a mighty Colossus. All cinema seemed to live in its shadow, and several other studios tried to imitate its success with cinematic universes of their own. There was the now-dead DC Extended Universe. There was the stillborn Dark Universe. Columbia Pictures even announced the Ghost Corps, which was intended to construct an interconnected “Ghostbusters” universe. It was way out of hand. 

Sony, still possessing the film rights to Spider-Man, decided to make an interconnected Spider-Man Villain universe, of which “Kraven the Hunter” is the final chapter. Watching Chandor’s film, though, one can see that neither the studio nor the filmmakers are interested in starting anything anymore. There is no presumption that fans will be interested in long-form mythmaking, and sequel teases remain light. This allows “Kraven” to be stupid on its own. And, in a weird way, that’s a relief. We’re free. We don’t have to take Kraven the Hunter seriously as a perpetual figure across many movies. We can just watch him in a sucky movie and move on with our lives. 

Yes, “Kraven” sucks, but it still possesses the ability to entertain. 

/Film Rating: 5 out of 10

“Kraven the Hunter” opens in theaters on December 13, 2024.