Back in the day, we had Barbenheimer, a mash up at the movies between Greta Gerwig’s hysterical satire Barbie, and Christopher Nolan’s meticulous historical drama Oppenheimer. The craze had countless audience members showing up dressed in pink, and with old-fashioned hats. It was all good fun. Hollywood tried to replicate the marketing gimmick this year with Glicked, encouraging moviegoers to plunk down the cash to see Gladiator 2 and the musical Wicked, though this time out, one half of the equation did much better than the other. Now, as we look to the upcoming 2024 movies that will close out the year, Aaron Taylor-Johnson finds himself appearing in two movies that are competing for attention at the box office. So, might I suggest a weekend filled with Krav-feratu?
The more mainstream movie that is opening in theaters is the standalone Spider-Verse live action villain movie Kraven the Hunter, which casts Aaron Taylor-Johnson in the lead. Critics don’t love it. But critics haven’t liked most of the movies that Sony is doing in this non-Spidey universe, so maybe fans will flock to the theaters. During a recent press day, I asked Taylor-Johnson if fans should also go see the actor’s vampire thriller Nosferatu while they are checking out the latest Marvel-adjacent movie. And he got a good chuckle out of that concept, telling CinemaBlend:
I mean, those two characters are so far different, that I played. It was quite funny, because (Kraven director) J.C. (Chandor) just goes, ‘I can't believe that you are that guy, and then I've just seen you be this guy!’ So that's an interesting one for everybody. Kraven is… I'm super proud of this one. And I'm really excited to share it with the world. We spent three years putting this character together. J.C. is a brilliant director. He's made it kind of gritty, earthy, and grounded. It is a gangster story, with Russell Crow being just the best I've seen him in ages. … If you love action, this is going to be an entertaining, great, standalone movie.
As for Nosferatu, it is, as Aaron Taylor-Johnson says, quite different. In that film, we see a young woman (Lily Rose-Depp) struggling with an ethereal obsession she has with a dark force calling to her from the other side of the globe. The draw comes from the wicked Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard), and Taylor-Johnson is a man caught up in the lunacy. He’s not fighting a Rhino. That’s reserved for the Spider-Man universe. But things definitely do get weird in the vampire story that director Robert Eggers has cooked up.
There are rumors that Kraven the Hunter might be the last of the Spider-Man villains movies that Sony ends up making, with the studio turning its attention to Tom Holland’s Spider-Man 4, and hopefully more movies that actually involve everyone’s favorite web-slinger. Because to me, as someone who wrote an entire book on the history of the Spider-Man film franchise, I’ll never quite understand why we have three Venom movies, a Kraven movie, a Morbius movie, a Madame Web movie, and NONE of them include Spider-Man. Crazy.
Kraven the Hunter is in theaters now. Nosferatu opens on Christmas Day, if you are planning the Krav-feratu double feature. Enjoy!
