“Kraven the Hunter is a Marvel movie grounded heavily in the real world,” said star Aaron Taylor-Johnson. “And anyone who is familiar with the comics and the character of Kraven, they know that he’s a fierce hunter with the skill of a highly trained killer. So, I figure now’s a good time to answer the Internet’s biggest question about the film.”
“Will it be rated R?” the actor asked himself. “Fuck yes it’s going to be rated R.”
(Editor’s note: When we’re talking about an R rating here, we’re obviously talking about an American R rating, which is closer to an Australian MA15+ than it is our own R18+ rating — David)
At CinemaCon 2023 in Las Vegas, Sony announced that Kraven the Hunter will officially be Sony’s first R-rated Marvel film. Which is saying something after two PG-13 Venom movies and, well, Morbius. Directed by J.C. Chandor, it stars Taylor-Johnson, as the main character along with Oscar-winner Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola, Christopher Abbott, and Russell Crowe as Kraven’s father.
Sony screened the first footage for the film too, which it said would be out later this summer. It began with a truck driving down a dirt road blocked off by a fence. One man is guarding the fence: Kraven. One of the men in the truck tells him to move since there’s six of them, and only one of him. But Kraven said, there’s six of you now. The truck tries to run him over, only it fails, and he starts ripping their necks out and biting them.
We see that Kraven has been trained by his father to respect nature and that to believe that people are prey — but he and his son are predators. We see shots him stabbing guys, snapping necks, it’s all hyper-violent and very bloody. His eyes change colour signalling he has some kind of power. DeBose’s character says he’s like his father, but Kraven disagrees.
Text on the screen says that “No one survives the hunt,” as we see Kraven moving on all fours, running and jumping towards a helicopter and shooting a spear at someone in it. There’s also shot of him opening a chest and pulling out that iconic comics costume, complete with the fur lining, or at least some version of it.
A man walks into an office looking for someone only to find Kraven, holding a crossbow. Where’s this person, the man asks. “You’re standing in him,” Kraven says, as we see a bunch of goo and blood on the floor. “You’re a lunatic, I swear” a character says. Finally someone, it’s unclear who, says “There’s an animal in all of us. That’s why they call me Rhino” as we see an arm start to mutate and change into some kind of grey skin. No, Kraven isn’t the only Spider-Man villain in this. Rhino is in it too. But no, it did not sound like Paul Giamatti. Who is it? We don’t know just yet.
Nevertheless, while a movie based on Kraven the Hunter seemed pretty pointless, this footage shown at CinemaCon made me, let’s say, interested. Before I was apathetic. Now, we’ll see.
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