Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for Kraven the HunterSony’s Kraven the Hunter adapts one of Spider-Man’s most famous enemies with a few twists and surprises, as Sony’s Spider-Man Universe makes some changes to the Marvel villain’s lore and introduces a few other comic book characters. Kraven the Hunter marks the end of an era for the movies in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, delivering one final villain-centered movie before Sony’s cancelation of multiple similar projects. While Kraven the Hunter doesn’t reference or connect to any of the live-action Spider-Men introduced so far, it does draw some inspiration from the comic books for Kraven’s early days as “The Hunter”.
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Similarly to Sony’s Venom trilogy and Morbius, Kraven the Hunter depicts its titular hero as an anti-hero instead of a full-fledged villain. Though cruel in his hunting methods and a criminal by nature, Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Sergei Kravinoff is less evil than most major characters in Kraven the Hunter‘s cast. And also like Venom, Morbius, and Madame Web, Kraven the Hunter only learns to embrace his power and his responsibility at the end of his first solo movie, earning both his comic accurate costume and his official status as a known anti-hero in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe.
10 Kraven’s Abilities Are Enhanced By A Legendary Lion And Calypso’s Elixir
Kraven The Hunter Gains Superhuman Abilities Unlike His Comic Book Counterpart
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Sony’s Kraven the Hunter makes a huge change to its titular character’s origin story. In the movie, a young Sergei Kravinoff and his brother Dmitri accompany their father Nikolai in his quest to hunt a legendary lion, the “Tsar”. According to a legend, whoever hunts this unkillable lion will become a legend himself. Sergei accidentally finds the animal and exchanges peaceful looks with it, but a gunshot from Nikolai startles it and causes it to attack the child. A dying Sergei is then saved by a teenager called Calypso, who felt a calling to save Sergei with an elixir she received from her grandmother.
In the source material, Kraven the Hunter is a master assassin who’s obsessed with hunting increasingly difficult prey
Kraven the Hunter‘s young Sergei Kravinoff dies for a few minutes and comes back healthier and stronger than before. After his experience with the lion, Sergei develops super strength, super speed, enhanced senses, and an overall amplification of all his natural skills. This is a big difference from Marvel Comics’ Kraven the Hunter, who obtains his superhuman directly from Calypso’s elixirs. In the source material, Kraven the Hunter is a master assassin with a penchant for increasingly difficult prey, hence why he develops a deadly obsession with Spider-Man.
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9 Kraven Becomes “The Hunter” To Eliminate Criminals Like His Father
The Hunter Is An Urban Legend Feared By The Most Dangerous Assassins
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Shortly after his near-death experience with the legendary lion, Sergei Kravinoff chooses to leave his father and brother behind to become an assassin. Sergei names himself “Kraven” and gains fame as “The Hunter” — a stealthy, criminal-hunting figure who may or may not be real. As powerful kingpins fall one by one, the surviving crime lords agree that “once you’re on his list , you never come off”. As seen in Kraven the Hunter‘s opening scene, Kraven uses his enhanced speed and agility to kill his targets and escape unscathed.Later on in the movie, Kraven reveals to his father that he was always on the list, but he postponed the murder so he could kill every other criminal first. Nikolai’s refusal to pay the ransom for Dmitri’s freedom seals the deal for Kraven, who loses all respect for his father. However, Kraven first focuses on freeing his brother and defeating Aleksei before punishing his father. Kraven never considered himself his father’s successor, but he accepted his role as an assassin to kill other criminals.
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8 Aleksei Sytsevich Hires The Foreigner To Kill Kraven And Exact Revenge On Nikolai Kravinoff
Aleksei Sytsevich’s Hitman Is More Powerful Than Him, But Dies Due To His Arrogance
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Aleksei Sytsevich chaperones Nikolai Kravinoff and his sons in their quest to hunt the Tsar lion. At some point during their trip, Nikolai takes offense at Aleksei’s friendliness due to his illness, which makes Aleksei seem weak to Nikolai, — and there’s nothing more insulting to Nikolai than weakness, both physical and psychological. Nikolai humiliates Aleksei, and Aleksei swears to exact revenge on Nikolai and his family in return. Years later, Aleksei Sytsevich is a powerful crime lord, and he hires a hitman nicknamed “the Foreigner” to kill the Hunter before the Hunter kills him.
Kraven the Hunter
doesn’t explain how exactly the Foreigner’s powers work
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The Foreigner possesses psionic abilities that allow him to freeze time perception in his enemies’ minds, making them completely defenseless and amnesic for a few seconds. Kraven the Hunter doesn’t explain how exactly the Foreigner’s powers work or how he gained them. Other characters develop animal-themed superhuman abilities — some through mystical means and some through scientific experiments — yet The Foreigner’s powers seem to be entirely psychic. However, the Foreigner’s abilities are very faithful to the comics, but the countdown to his “time freeze” is cut from ten seconds to three.
7 Kraven Almost Dies The Same Way His Father May Have Killed His Mother
The Foreigner’s Assassination Attempt On Kraven Suggests Nikolai Killed Sergei’s Mother The Same Way
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Kraven uses tranquilizer darts to infiltrate one of his targets’ lairs. The Foreigner tracks him down, discovers the darts, and realizes that their main ingredient is incredibly powerful in higher doses. The Foreigner informs Aleksei Sytsevic about his discovery, and they agree to kill Kraven once and for all. Aleksei and the Foreigner corner Kraven in his mother’s hacienda, and the Foreigner shoots Kraven with multiple darts, each filled with deadly doses of the rare ingredient, which causes hallucinations right before death. Kraven starts hallucinating spiders before Calypso arrives to heal him with the same elixir she used to resuscitate him when the lion mauled him.
The spiders Kraven hallucinates could be a subtle set-up to an eventual feud with Spider-Man
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Kraven’s hallucinations resemble the hallucinations his late mother suffered before she took her life when Kraven was a child. Nikolai constantly reminded his sons that their mother had an irremediable psychological condition that made her “weak”, and he advised Sergei and Dmitri not to regret their mother’s death due to this supposed weakness. Considering that the rare plant that causes Kraven’s hallucinations grows in the Kravinoffs’ property, it seems like Nikolai injected Kraven’s mother with the substance in order to justify her death.
6 Calypso Kills The Foreigner And Saves Kraven’s Life
Calypso’s Elixir And Archery Skills Save Kraven At The Last Possible Moment
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Kraven’s enhanced skills are no match for the Foreigner’s psychic powers and his weaponized plant. The Foreigner evades every attack from the Hunter and injects him with several lethal doses of the psychedelic substance. Then, the villain takes out his gun and gets ready to shoot Kraven. However, Calypso arrives just in time to shoot an arrow through the Foreigner’s eye, killing him instantly. Calypso then uses some of her limited supply of healing elixir to negate the effects of the psychedelic substance and save Kraven from a painful death.
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In the comics, Calypso is a ruthlessly evil Spider-Man enemy with a deep knowledge of black magic. She’s able to transfer her soul to other bodies and mind-control individuals as powerful as Curt Connors a.k.a. The Lizard. Calypso’s mystical abilities slowly corrupt Kraven’s mind, and they may have played a role in his decision to take his life in the 2006 storyline Kraven’s Last Hunt. Ariana Debose’s Calypso is nowhere near as villainous as her comic book counterpart, however.
5 Miles Warren Is Creating Animal-Themed Villains In New York
Kraven the Hunter’s Animal-Themed Supervillains Gain Their Powers From Miles Warren’s Experiments
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Inspired by Nikolai Kravinoff’s insults, Aleksei Sytsevich found a solution to his physical ailment in New York. According to Aleksei, a scientist named Miles Warren used an experimental treatment on him that grants him more stamina and strength, but requires him to keep its side effects in control with a feeding tube that pumps a special liquid into his body. The side effects of Aleksei Sytsevish’s treatment, of course, are his transformation into a hulking creature with impenetrable skin that resembles a rhinoceros — an appearance that earned him the nickname of “The Rhino”.
A
Kraven the Hunter
sequel could have had Miles Warren as its main antagonist
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Miles Warren never appears on screen in Kraven the Hunter, but he’s the one responsible for Aleksei Sytsevich’s transformation into the Rhino, as well as Dmitri Kravinoff’s eventual transformation into the Chameleon. In the comics, Miles Warren a.k.a. the Jackal is the evil scientist behind the creation of Spider-Man’s many clones and the spread of the Spider-Virus in Manhattan. Kraven the Hunter 2 may not happen, but a Kraven the Hunter sequel could have had Miles Warren as its main antagonist and new animal-themed villains like the Lizard, Vermin, Scorpion, and Stegron as secondary antagonists.
4 Kraven Kills Alexei Sytsevich In His Rhino Form
Kraven The Hunter Finds A Vulnerability In The Rhino’s Impenetrable Skin
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After killing the Foreigner, Kraven intercepts Aleksei Sytsevich’s convoy and leads an animal stampede to knock over Aleksei’s car. Aleksei removes the feeding tube from his stomach and his body immediately begins to transform. Alekesi jumps out of his car in his full-blown Rhino form, and Kraven struggles to land a single blow on him due to his impenetrable skin and superhuman strength. Beaten within an inch of his life, Kraven stabs the Rhino inside the hole in his stomach, causing the villain to bleed profusely.
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Paul Giamatti played a version of Aleksei Sytsevich who used a robotic exoskeleton in
The Amazing Spider-Man 2
.
Kraven also ties the Rhino to some of the wild animals in the surrounding stampede, dragging him for several feet. Rhino collapses on the ground and loses part of his animal qualities before exhaling his last breath. It’s unknown whether Kraven the Hunter‘s Rhino is definitely dead, as the villain is incredibly tough to kill in the source material, and he could have been a recurring antagonist in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe.
3 Kraven Kills His Father Indirectly With Help From A Bear
Kraven Completes His List By Letting His Father Die A Horrible Death
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After killing the Foreigner and the Rhino, the final crime lord left to kill is Nikolai Kravinoff, Kraven’s own father. Kraven stalks his father just how Nikolai taught him to stalk his prey, and both men sit down to talk about their past. Kraven lets Nikolai know that he won’t follow in his father’s footsteps even if he is undeniably a murderer, accepts a drink from Nikolai, and leaves. As Kraven walks away, Nikolai notices that a wild animal is approaching him and realizes that he doesn’t have enough ammo to defend himself. Kraven smiles and throws away the ammo he removed from Nikolai’s shotguns.
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The perfect timing and behavior of the stampede that helps Kraven defeat the Rhino and the bear that mauls Nikolai suggest that Kraven not only developed enhanced abilities from his encounter with the lion and his subsequent resuscitation, but also gained mystical communication with all wildlife. After Kraven the Hunter‘s ending, Sergei Kravinoff may be able to weaponize this communication even more effectively. Kraven doesn’t possess this ability in the source material.
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2 Dmitri Kravinoff Becomes The Chameleon And Takes Over His Father’s Criminal Empire
Dmitri Kravinoff Resorts To Miles Warren’s Experiments To Become As Powerful As His Brother Kraven
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After many years of psychological abuse from his father and the painful experience of being left to die with his captors, Dmitri Kravinoff decides to leave his so-called weakness behind and seek the same kind of power that made his brother an urban legend. Dmitri is on good terms with Sergei by the end of Kraven the Hunter, but he has already taken advantage of Nikolai’s connections to dive deep into his father’s criminal business. Dmitri also reveals his new abilities to Kraven when he morphs his face to resemble his brother’s, like a chameleon.
The Chameleon is Spider-Man’s first official supervillain. He first apeared in 1963’s
The Amazing Spider-Man #1
.
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Dmitri Kravinoff’s “Chameleon” appearance is a perfectly comic-accurate recreation of the villain’s classic comic appearance. In the comics, Dmitri Smerdyakov adopts the identity of the Chameleon to fight Spider-Man using his impersonation abilities, sometimes by himself, and sometimes alongside his brother Kraven. Dmitri has successfully impersonated important Marvel figures like Steve Rogers and Spider-Man himself, and he has earned his spot as one of Spider-Man’s longest-recurring enemies.
1 Kraven Inherits His Comic Accurate Costume From Nikolai Kravinoff
Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Kraven The Hunter Only Wears His Lion Fur Jacket In One Scene
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Following Nikolai Kravinoff’s death, Kraven returns to his father’s manor and notices that the lion that gave him his powers, whose corpse Nikolai had turned into a trophy, is gone. Kraven then finds a note from his father telling him that he won’t be able to escape his destiny: to remain a deadly hunter like his father. As a final gift, Nikolai leaves Kraven a jacket made with the legendary lion’s skin and fur. Kraven puts it on and sees himself in the mirror, recreating his iconic sitting pose from the comics.
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Surprisingly, the Kraven the Hunter scenes featuring Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s anti-hero running and fighting while wearing his comic-accurate costume are not in the movie. Kraven the Hunter‘s ending scene sets up a sequel where Kraven carries on with his hunting missions while wearing the lion jacket, but it doesn’t follow this tease up with a post-credits scene or any extra visual tease of any kind. Therefore, the only other way to see Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Kraven wearing his comic book outfit in motion is by watching Kraven the Hunter‘s trailers.
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6.3/10 Kraven the Hunter R
Director J.C. Chandor Writers Art Marcum , Richard Wenk , Matt Holloway Release Date December 13, 2024 Runtime 127 Minutes Budget 130 million Studio(s) Sony Expand
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Sony’s Upcoming Marvel Movie Release Dates
Kraven the Hunter
Release Date December 13, 2024