New “Kraven the Hunter” Trailer Finds Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Marvel Villain Off the Leash
“My son, we are hunters, the greatest the world has ever known,” says Russell Crowe’s character at the top of the new trailer for director J.C Chandor’s Kraven the Hunter. We find the son he’s speaking to, Sergei Kravinoff, aka Kraven the Hunter, in prison, but not for long. “The Hunter is a myth,” a fellow inmate tells Kraven—a costly mistake. Kraven proves that the myth of the Hunter has an ounce of truth and makes a bold, brutal escape that shows off his merciless fighting style. This is one dude you really don’t want to question.
Chandor’s film is the first to feature this classic Spider-Man villain who debuted in the pages of the comics in 1964. Taylor-Johnson’s Sergei Kravinoff is left for dead by his father after a lion attack, but it turns out that the lion’s bite has given him immense powers. Sergei uses these powers to become Kraven the Hunter, the protector of the animal kingdom, no matter the human body count.
Sergei’s father isn’t his only antagonist in the film; Alessandro Nivola plays Aleksei Sytsevic, aka the Rhino, a beastly figure with the strength to overpower anyone, including Kraven. The trailer boasts plenty of new footage, all moodily set to Johnny Cash’s “The Man Comes Around,” as Kraven stalks poachers and bad guys and eventually faces the Rhino in a climactic battle.
This is the second trailer for Kraven the Hunter, providing another glimpse at Chandor’s R-rated film’s approach to telling Kraven’s origin story, which turns the villain in an antihero and makes him part of Sony’s stable of misunderstood, monstrously powerful Spider-Man villains—Jared Leto’s Morbius, who boasts the superpowered versions of a vampire bat’s strength, and Tom Hardy’s Venom, the product of the marriage between an alien symbiote and a man. Kraven’s connection to animals after his violent communion with the lion allows him to communicate with them as he tracks his own prey. “My father puts evil into the world,” Kraven says in the first trailer to Ariana DeBose’s Calypso. “I take it out.”
Joining Crowe, Taylor-Johnson, DeBose, and Nivola are Fred Hechinger, Christopher Abbott, and Levi Miller.
Check out the red band trailer below. Kraven the Hunter hits theaters on December 13.
For more upcoming films from Sony Pictures, check out these stories:
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Featured image: Aaron Taylor-Johnson is “Kraven the Hunter.” Courtesy Sony Pictures.
