In this era of cinematic universes and franchise filmmaking, some studios don't learn lessons easily. Sony is no stranger to the occasional terrible film, but will they or their audience see the blood-red flags being waved in every direction by their latest effort?
Any mildly informed viewer can plot the course of the ongoing Sony Marvel experiment. They've given solo projects to two classic Spider-Man villains, Venom and Morbius. While the former was far from flawless, the recently released Morbius has been savaged by critics and audiences. Unfortunately, studios are way past waiting to see if a movie succeeds before green lighting the next entry.
Kraven the Hunter is set to be the fourth film in the Sony Spider-Man Universe (SSU) when it premieres early next year. The film is to be helmed by A Most Violent Year and Triple Frontier director J. C. Chandor. The title character was created in 1964 by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko and has remained an iconic Spider-Man antagonist for almost sixty years. Sony has been trying to put Kraven into a variety of projects before settling on a solo film around six years ago. He will be portrayed by Kick-Ass and Age of Ultron star Aaron Taylor-Johnson in his first big-screen appearance. Christopher Abbott of Girls fame and Face/Off star Alessandro Nivola have both been cast as villains. Little more is known about the film, but given the current state of Sony's live-action Spider-Man efforts, faith is not high.
Ignoring the Amazing Spider-Man films, because Sony certainly does, the SSU is currently only comprised of villain solo projects. Much has been made of Venom and its sequel. They aren't great films, but they do have a certain charm to them. Tom Hardy's unhinged performance as Eddie Brock and his interplay with his symbiote was viewed by many as excellent character writing. Despite some boring action and rumors of tremendous studio editing, both films have ardent defenders. The second entry, Let There Be Carnage, brought fan-favorite monster Carnage to the screen, with extremely mixed results. Venom benefited from a few factors outside its control. Fans were awaiting a proper on-screen version of the iconic villain turned anti-hero and, despite the underwhelming results, many were happy to see the character in all his glory. Morbius had no such luck.
Very few fans were banging down the doors of the studio demanding a movie about Michael Morbius. The Living Vampire has his fans, but he's a B-list character when compared to Spider-Man, or even Venom. Expectations were low for Morbius and the film has handily slid under it. The advertisements made it look horrible, and the finished product didn't disappoint. The film doubles down on all the problems of Venom without any of its charms. Bad movies are a dime a dozen, bad superhero movies are no less common, but this particular failure establishes a pattern. It suffers from all the same problems as every other SSU feature, while also making it seem like the good aspects of Venom occurred despite the studio. This makes it painfully likely that Kraven will follow the same path, possibly with even worse results.
The three SSU films each have different directors, there are five total screenwriters across the three films, and the crews vary wildly with very little overlap. And yet, each of the three films suffers from the same bad pacing, lack of originality, weak characters, terrible action scenes, and inconceivably bad editing. The three films feel like episodes of a bad anthology series, a dedicated fan could cut them together and convincingly create a cohesive movie. The problems have to be coming from higher than the director or writers. Everyone complains about the editing in these films, and they don't just mean the bad and jarring cuts. Sony seems to be going straight for the throat with their Sinister Six movie concept and breaking the individual films into whatever shape they need to fill to make that happen. There's no blending of disparate worlds like in The Avengers, these films need to be as similar as possible, and that strategy is falling apart fast.
There's no way of knowing whether Kraven the Hunter will be any good before it comes out. The film has yet to drop a trailer, there's very little to go off of at the moment. Unfortunately, the cinematic universe model shows its weaknesses when films start to blend together. If Morbius represents a pattern in the SSU, then it suggests that Kraven will be another bland waste of decent source material. If it represents a downward trend in the quality of the films, then Kraven could be even worse. Sony's efforts toward a cinematic universe haven't had the courtesy to disappear like Universal's Dark Universe. It's clearly sticking around. Fans can only hope that the SSU and Kraven the Hunter can learn from the mistakes of their predecessors, rather than repeating them.