Quick Synopsis: Sergei Kravinoff is a big-game hunter who specialises in dickheads. His family history brings him into conflict with Rhino and Foreigner, who wants to know what love is. And to kill people. It’s mainly the killing people.
So it’s ended. After six films, the Sony Spider-verse has closed. Or, as Sony initially called it: Sony Picture’s Universe Of Marvel Characters, shortened to SPUMC. The fact that that is not a joke tells you everything you need to know about it. They have always felt like unwanted distractions. Once people realised they were all setups and spin-offs of a main universe it would never meet (outside of fleeting moments) they began to feel like wastes of time. It’s not a good sign that out of six, two are generally regarded as some of the worst films ever made. If they knew, you’d have to think they would have ended it with The Last Dance, because Kraven is a weird choice as a curtain closer. There’s no sense of closure or wider universe development. Truth be told, the films have NEVER felt connected, which is a baffling choice, almost as baffling as “let’s make a series of films based on villains we treat as heroes”.
So, how about Kraven on its own? It doesn’t work. It’s not as bad as Madame Web, but it’s not really good. It feels like it was written scene by scene by different writers, with no rewriting going on to connect them once they’ve happened. Characters are not just inconsistent, there are times when their very existence seems baffling. He finds a woman based solely on the fact that she put a card in his pocket. He meets up with her and asks for her help in finding people, within five minutes of telling her “I’m a hunter, I can find anybody”. So……..why does he need her again? A lot of his attributes are not only informed attributes (where we hear of them, but never see them), but they’re also often visually disproven. Characters speak as if he hasn’t been spotted and is a complete mystery. He then runs along the street in central London with no disguise. Not only would he have been seen, but there would also be youtube edits of him 5 minutes after the first time he runs on the outside of a building.
Some of the performances are serviceable, but they never ever get better than that. However, they sure do get A LOT worse. The accents are as inconsistent as the visual effects (and that’s not a compliment to either of those), there’s one performer in particular who is only in for a few minutes at the start, but her line delivery is SO BAD that it’s almost laughable. It’s so bad, in fact, that I won’t even name the actor or the character because there’s no way this performer was trained, and if they were, they should ask for their money back.
The ADR is more noticeable than any film I’ve seen in a while, the CGI is ropier than a BDSM pirate ship, and the action scenes are flat, with even bloodshed moments feeling like they have no impact. It’s not just that there are a lot of bad moments, there’s nothing good. The soundtrack is completely forgettable, even Madame Web had a Cranberries song.
In some ways, I’m sad the SPUMC is other, people always look forward to a load of SPUMC coming at them, and every film in this franchise has potential. But it’s never lived up to that. There’s not a single drop of SPUMC that hasn’t made you wonder whether it could have been better.
Because despite the last trailer giving WAY too much away, who isn’t going to see this film? It’s Batman fighting Superman…for at least a third of the film anyway. And despite that trailer there’s still hope. The idea that Batman is turned against Superman because of the chaos he caused in Man of Steel is good screenwriting; it makes sense from a character point and helps bring the films together. The casting is also very solid, with Batfleck actually looking to be one of the best iterations of the Dark Knight yet. But we all still need to take a step back to wait and see whether Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor is the trainwreck everyone is HOPING it will be, or whether like Keaton and Ledger before him he will turn in a great performance despite the naysayers. I have no idea, but I at least love how much fun he seems to be having.
two superhero films because I didn’t want it to be inundated with them, and I wanted this to be a cut away from a lot of most anticipated lists by not just focusing on the big blockbusters coming our way (but saying that I am looking forward to Civil War and Dr Strange).
Disney’s next animated film after the disappointing Big Hero 6 (and fuck you it wasn’t that good) brought to us by the directing duo behind some of Disney’s greatest films (
Kubo and the two strings: August 19
Ben Affleck finally took a break from acting to get back to his much more interesting career as a director, with this follow up to Argo. Adapted from another 
Troubled Productions 