Sony’s insatiable desire to construct a Marvel universe of its very own has already reaped two high-profile casualties following the abandonment of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 4 and the cancellation of various spin-offs that were in the works prior to the release of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, but Kraven the Hunter was well on its way to generating some genuinely good buzz.
Of course, that’s something the studio should be clamoring to achieve given the vast swathes of comic book adaptations currently in development, but so far nothing outside of Venom 3 is capturing imaginations. Morbius was an unmitigated disaster, Madame Web has a long way to go in order to win over the doubters, and the less said about El Muerto the better.
However, the revelation that Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Kraven the Hunter would be a blood-drenched exercise in R-rated brutality caught everyone off-guard, with the CinemaCon footage drawing the sort of positive reactions Sony really isn’t used to. Unfortunately, in what’s more a summation of superhero fandom more than anything else, a solitary leaked image has undone a lot of the goodwill.
It’s being compared to a lot of things, but Dwayne Johnson’s Hercules is one that’s hard to shake off, based entirely on the fact The Rock’s tedious blockbuster made the bizarre decision to have him wear armor that was quite clearly several sizes too small for his gigantic frame. Sleeveless apparel is hardly going to make or break Kraven the Hunter, but it does show just how quickly Sony’s Spider-Man Universe is ready to be turned on, which is admittedly a fair enough assessment based on nothing but history.
