This article contains spoilers for “Kraven the Hunter.”
“Kraven the Hunter” is the last straw for Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, which seems to be dead and truly gone. After trying to build a bizarre universe of Spider-Man villains that aren’t really villains — and also Madame Web for some reason — it seems the studio realized you can’t really make a cinematic universe when your movies aren’t really connected, and star characters that don’t really act like they should be acting.
At least the universe formerly known as SPUMC is going out not with a bang, but also not a whimper, as “Kraven the Hunter” is dumb, very dumb, and also not good, but it sure is entertaining. As our own reviewer noted, “The badness of ‘Kraven’ — paired with the blustering confidence of the lead character — lends it a certain kind of whimsical, let’s-all-have-a-chuckle charm. ‘Kraven’ sucks, but one can still have a good time.”Â
The movie not only introduces Kraven the titular hunter, but a whole lot of Spider-Man villains like Chameleon as well as the second live-action Rhino — here played by Alessandro Nivola. You know Rhino, right? The villain who is meant to look like a rhinoceros and be kind of a badass? Well, it turns out making a live-action Rhino is harder than making audiences believe Superman can fly, because, for the second time, live-action Rhino sucks.
In “Kraven the Hunter,” the “Jurassic Park III” actor portrays Rhino as more of a Bond villain (and inept one, but still) with a weird skin condition that — when enhanced by a sketchy New York doctor — allows him to transform his skin into a bulletproof armor that kinda sorta resembles a rhinoceros. Except, he ends up looking more like a weird version of Rocksteady from “The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” His scaly, rocky skin is less like a rhino and more like Marvel’s The Thing or like he had the greyscale disease from “Game of Thrones.” It is only in the final fight that a giant horn suddenly and out of nowhere grows out of the dude’s forehead. In short, it’s bizarre and not very good at all.
Rhino deserves better than this
Why, exactly, is it so hard to make Rhino look cool on screen? It’s not like we haven’t seen more outlandish comic book villains brought to life before. After all, the Marvel Cinematic Universe made Groot a household name, “The Suicide Squad” made Polka-Dot Man look cool, and who can forget about Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man in “Doom Patrol?” There are few characters as hard to imagine looking anywhere near as good as that guy, yet it worked! So why can’t we have a Rhino that looks halfway decent? Traditionally, it is just a strong guy in a bulletproof suit themed like a rhino, why is that so hard to translate to the screen?Â
If Nivola’s take on the character kept his weird skin condition and just had a helmet or something with the horn, that’d have made it at least a bit better. As it stands, however, he looks just as bad as when “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” gave us Paul Giamatti in a weird mech that barely resembles a rhino.
It sucks that “Kraven the Hunter” doesn’t work, because the movie does have a lot going for it. For one, this is a very rare Marvel movie (also counting MCU titles) that genuinely feels like it takes place in a comic universe full of people with powers. In addition to Kraven and Rhino, we also meet Chameleon, the Foreigner, Calypso, and even hear about The Jackal. Rather than feel overstuffed like “Spider-Man 3,” this makes the movie feel like taking place in an expansive universe where you could meet a supervillain every few blocks, like when you play the “Spider-Man” game and constantly run into supervillains.
And yet, what is a fleshed-out and expanded universe full of superpowered individuals if we can’t even get someone as simple as Rhino right? Perhaps it actually is time to let this Sony universe of Spider-Man villains without Spider-Man die and try again when execs figure out how to do a guy in a suit that looks like a rhinoceros not look like he should be fighting teenage mutant turtles that are also ninjas.