This has been a relatively quiet year for comic book blockbusters, given previous years when the powerhouses at Marvel Studios and DC were delivering a minimum of two or three features a year. Marvel basically relied on Deadpool and Wolverine, which did very well at the box office and helped to straighten out the convoluted Marvel Mutliverse. At the same time, DC delivered a second Joker movie, but then circled the wagons and waited for James Gunn to get his DCU off the ground. That left room for Sony Pictures, which continued to build out its superhero offerings with Madame Web and the third and final Venom movie. And the studio will close things out with Kraven the Hunter, opening in theaters on December 13.
In preparation for Kraven the Hunter, Sony dropped a video featuring the opening 8 minutes of the movie. And while we don’t expect Spider-Man to show up in the film, I did pick up a very clever Spidey Easter Egg honoring Kraven’s comic book history. Watch the clip, and we will discuss it on the other side.
The clip goes a long way to set up a lot of details about Kraven, played on screen by Aaron Taylor-Johnson. He comes from a family of criminals. Gangsters, even. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call Kraven a bounty hunter, but he can be hired to complete extremely difficult tasks – like infiltrating a Russian prison for the purpose of tracking and killing a rival boss. He’s strong. He’s fast.
And his prison identifying number is “0864.”
Whenever a comic book nerd like myself hears that, we tend to perk up and think, “OK, why did you name him that?” There usually is a reason. And for Kraven the Hunter, 0864 means 08/64, or August 1984 – the month and year that Kraven first appeared as a villain in issue number 15 of The Amazing Spider-Man. So that’s why Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s prisoner is labeled 0864 in the movie.
All in all, I think the footage looks pretty good. I‘m on record saying that I didn’t love Madame Web, and by the time I reached the finale of Venom: The Last Dance, the absence of Spider-Man really pissed me off. Because I don’t understand the concept of building a universe filled with Spider-Man villains that won’t ever include Spider-Man. My first – and really only – thought while watching how agile and powerful Kraven looks (and he does look very formidable) is, “Damn, I wonder how he’d look fighting Spider-Man?”
In some alternate universe somewhere, Sony keeps making these movies for the purpose of one day dropping a Spider-Man character in, so he can fight Venom, Morbius, The Vulture, The Rhino, Kraven, and all the characters who are part of these movies. Until that happens, it just feels like we are spinning our wheels.
Look for Kraven the Hunter in a theater near you starting on December 13.
