As we come to the year's end, it's abundantly clear that the superhero genre is ripe for reinvention. Down from the average superhero movie making $1 billion at the box office just five years ago, the average in 2024 was under $500 million as of October. This year's number paints even too rosy a picture, as it's disproportionately lifted by fans turning out for the atrocious and insulting Deadpool & Wolverine, this site's worst-reviewed movie of at least the last two years. On the whole, though, audiences don't care about the cinematic universes anymore, and aren't showing up to see where they're headed.

That's unlikely to change with Kraven the Hunter, Sony's latest installment of their parallel set of Spider-Man spinoffs that have so far included in their ranks the snoozer Venom series and 2022's embarrassingly bad Morbius. The company has never found its footing with these films, and Kraven is no exception: while some of the globetrotting action and hero picks are fun, and a slew of leading roles are filled with characters who certainly look the part, their performances are weak across the board and can't overcome an overstuffed plot and distracting visual effects. 

"Overstuffed" is no exaggeration here, as director J. C. Chandor eschews the tight scripts and limited settings of films that made him famous, like 2011's Margin Call and 2014's A Most Violent Year, in favor of a 127-minute slog that bounces back and forth from posh American boarding schools to African safaris to Russian tundra to London office buildings. We open on one of the film's more exciting scenes, a complex assassination scheme by a disguised Kraven in an isolated arctic prison complex. It's a hero's entrance for an infamously nuanced villain; he takes out a vicious arms trafficker who rules the prison, and (besides the gratuitous violence) it's a cut-and-dry mysterious-good-guy introduction. 

But we lose the scene's momentum almost immediately by flashing back to two interrelated backstories: first, that of young Kraven, born Sergei Kravinoff, and his half brother Dmitri; and second, that of young Calypso, a girl whose African heritage comes with all sorts of tarot cards and mystical serums. (No matter that tarot is a distinctly European phenomenon, and so feels awkward and out of place on the savannah.) Sergei and Dmitri are brought on a big-game hunting trip by their organized crime boss Nikolai after their mother dies, forced into suicide by Nikolai's cruelty. When they encounter a lion, Sergei peacefully bonds with it before it's spooked by Nikolai; the lion attacks and almost mortally wounds Sergei, who's saved by a mixture of a magical potion (from Calypso, who was conveniently in the neighborhood) and the lion's blood. The combination imbues him not only with incredible physical prowess, but also psychological connection and mutual respect with wild animals; he consequently comes to hate his father and runs away from home.

This whole origin story takes a long time, especially with middling child actors. Sixteen years after the backstory, Sergei has become Kraven, an assassin who hunts criminal world "big game". He's protective of Dmitri, now a meek nightclub singer desperate for his father's approval, and collaborative with grown-up Calypso, now a corporate lawyer. When Dmitri is kidnapped, Kraven and Calypso have to work together to save him while surviving attacks from the Rhino (a nerdy former accomplice of Nikolai's who's now a chemically-enhanced villain), the Foreigner (a hypnotizing assassin), and a host of other baddies who keep throwing themselves at the pair. 

Throughout, each of the characters looks their part. Aaron Taylor-Johnson's wild locks and cut abs are delicious for Kraven's bad-boy aesthetic; Ariana DeBose has Calypso's office-worker-turned-supergirl grit; Fred Hechinger hasn't aged a day from 2018's Eighth Grade and is perfectly whiny as Dmitri; Russell Crowe has put on maybe 100 pounds just in time for Nikolai's aging malice; Alessandro Nivola's beady eyes match Rhino's ambitions; and Christopher Abbott is more than dark, sexy, and racially ambiguous enough (just as he was in 2023's Sanctuary) for the Foreigner. 

But not a single one of these actors offers anything memorable. Taylor-Johnson, most importantly, doesn't have the acting chops or the main character energy needed for Kraven – he's at his best in a dopey off-kilter leading role like in Kick-Ass (2010), or a quirky supporting character like in Bullet Train (2022). DeBose delivers every line with the grating half-smirk of her BAFTA "Angela Bassett did the thing" rap. Hechinger is so pathetic his ultimate shift into supervillain Chameleon isn't believable. Crowe unquestionably has the sauce – he's the best actor in the movie – but blundered accent coaching means his Russian pronunciations are as uneven as his Les Mis singing. Nivola is serviceable but his character design as Rhino doesn't make enough use of his super strength or supposed cunning. And Abbott barely even fits into the story such that his best dialogue is just the repeated gimmick of counting to three. Various other baddies, like Murat Seven's Turkish hitman or Tom Reed's secretary-cum-henchman, soak up valuable screentime while being immediately forgettable.  

Past the universally underwhelming performances, several aspects of the film are decent enough. Careful use of humor that avoids the gimmicky wink-and-nod of Iron Man or Deadpool but still manages some funny jokes, such as when Kraven explains his job to a businessman in an elevator, or when one gunman admonishes another for forgetting that car bulletproof glass is bulletproof in both directions and shooting at himself. Action sequences are good but often too short, with animal-themed kills such as with a bear trap or a lion's tooth the most satisfying yet relatively underutilized. CGI animals don't look great, but are better than I expected. The themes of family commitments and revenge aren't exactly fully-baked, but interact nicely with Kraven's antihero status.

Is this the reinvention the genre needs? No. But with a better cast (more accent training) and trimmed-down plot (cut Calypso), is it a good start? I think so.