3 min to read
Kraven The Hunter
How good is Sony's first R-rated Marvel Movie?
The Good: One of the great parts of the movie was the action. While most of it was shown in the trailers, I still loved every second that we got. Most of the action shown felt new and distinct. Aaron Taylor Johnson went all out for all the scenes, and it really shows by how good the final scenes were. I just wish we had more.
As for performances, Aaron Taylor Johnson (ATJ) and Russell Crowe are the standouts. ATJ got in such good shape for the film and nearly perfectly embodies a man who decides to become one with nature and the wilderness. Russell Crowe also plays such a nasty father and plays the role incredibly.
The Meh: One of the main problems with the movie keeping it from being great was the lack of tension throughout the film. During the film there was intrigue built up and there were attempts at making character development, but none of it was very intriguing or compelling. You do understand characters and their motivations, but every decision seems to be such a surface-level/obvious decision, which made the movie a little predictable at times and didn’t allow the audience to be anxious for the characters, especially Kraven. It’s established that Kraven is “The Hunter,” and that “The Hunter” is supposed to be unstoppable. Because the movie took that extremely literally, the movie fails to give the audience a sense of urgency or fear of failure, creating the lack of tension throughout the movie. While watching you can tell that there are attempts to fix some of these issues, but the attempts aren’t as successful as they should have been.
Going back to character development, most of the relationships between characters are quite baseline. The movie does a great job to have you understand the characters and their motivations, but everyone’s motivations and all of the relationships are very simple in order to make the story easy to follow (which was appreciated). While that’s not inherently bad, it was disappointing there were no attempts and developing complex characters and relationships, which was a little disappointing.
Additionally, the writing is pretty cheesy at times and there are some occasional bad ADR. The writing didn’t bother me and my wife, but it may bother others (and bothered a lot of critics). As for the ADR, it’s not very frequent and it’s not as bad as Madame Web by a wide margin.
The Bad: There are scenes where it shows Kraven getting his powers. These scenes are extremely cheesy and look like they came directly out of a National Geographic or Animal Planet. They definitely should have found a different way to visualize everything (I know this sounds very vague, but I don’t want to spoil the scenes). It’s like they had 1 mediocre idea and stuck with it to the end despite it not fitting the movie at all.
Overall: This movie is much better and more enjoyable than people will give it credit for. There aren’t a lot of individually great parts of the movie, but after thinking back on the movie I just think that it was fun, despite all the flaws. Yes, there was a lot that I wish could have been improved or changed, but the movie is still quite enjoyable. This is SIGNIFICANTLY better than Madame Web, and I find this to be more intriguing than Venom 3. I wouldn’t mind watching this again.
Rating: 3.5/5
Comments