A lot has been said about the various Sony Spider-adjacent movies. The latest (and reportedly last) of these, Kraven, is no exception. Kraven is a villain in Marvel Comics who most often crosses paths with Spider-Man, although he’s clashed with assorted other heroes in his several decades of history (he first appeared in 1964). This movie suffered from multiple release dates, as well as the negative connotations of the Sony brand (Morbius, Madame Web).

In the comics, Kraven is a hunter who decided he needed more of a challenge and started after super-humans. Unfortunately for him, Kraven’s first target was Spider-Man, who is notoriously hard to beat. Kraven has fought alone and as part of the Sinister Six, a group of assorted Spidey foes whose membership changes but who keep going after the Wall-Crawler. Kraven doesn’t use guns, but is a fan of assorted old-style weaponry when he’s not just using his bare hands. It is kind of interesting that the character who goes by “the Hunter” goes after an animal themed hero, and works so often with more animal themed villains (Doc Ock, Chameloen, Rhino, Scorpion).

The movie jumps around in time a lot, going from now to many years ago to recently to now again, and then ending a year after the big climax. That makes it sound almost more like a Dr. Who episode than a Spider-Foe movie. In this world, Kraven is the son of Nikolai Kravoinoff, a notorious criminal, head of a large organization. Nikolai (played by Russel Crowe, although how they got him for this, I have no idea) is in many ways a stereotype, a Russian gangster who revels in being tough and macho and is doing his best to force that on his family.

Sergei, before he becomes Kraven, nearly gets killed by a huge lion, gets saved by a mystical formula from a conveniently appearing witch’s apprentice, and gains powers (which he doesn’t have in the comics). He runs away from home and does a lot of training (remarkably, we’re spared a training montage) and becomes someone who splits his time between living in a remote geodesic dome, killing poachers, and hunting down criminals.

Things get weird as there’s a struggle to control a recently killed gangster’s empire, a lawyer who seems to embrace the lawless side way too easily, family drama, international travel, and a host of nods to assorted Marvel characters. Ranging from actually in the movie to brief namechecks, we see or hear about Rhino, Chameleon, Foreigner, Calypso, and the Jackal. It sounds like the much rumored Sinister Six movie will never happen, but they kind of tried to cram it in here. Kraven has to face assorted perils like a CGI lion, a herd of CGI water buffalo (or yaks maybe?), and Russel Crowe’s Russian accent. Kraven seems more like Spider-Man in a lot of the movie, showing super strength, amazing reflexes, superhuman durability, enhanced senses, and what looks a lot like Spidey’s wall-crawling abilities several times. There are a lot of twists and turns, and an interesting ending that seemed like it was trying to set up more stories, although this is supposedly the last Sony/Spidey-verse movie.

What I Liked: There was a lot of action. Aaron Taylor-Johnon and Russel Crowe did the best they could with what they had to work with. The attempts at world-building were nicely done. We even got to see the Daily Bugle twice. While I can’t say this was any version of Kraven I’m familiar with, the anti-hero they made him into was enjoyable enough.

What I Didn’t: Sony keeps doing things like “We have the same name and general appearance of the character, let’s change everything else.” Kraven, and most of the comics characters that appeared in the movie, were very little like their comic counterparts. It was a weird choice to include so many characters, but make no mention of the ones that have actually been in the movies, like Morbius, Venom, or Madame Web and her crew.

This wasn’t as bad as so many people have been saying, but it wasn’t great. I’ll give this a 2.5 out of 5. If the Sony/Spider-verse is ending, they could have gone out on a worse note. Could have ended on a better one, too.