Kraven the Hunter is the visceral, action-packed origin story of how and why one of Marvel’s most iconic villains came to be. Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays Kraven, a man whose complex relationship with his ruthless father, Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe), starts him down a path of vengeance with brutal consequences, motivating him to become not only the greatest hunter in the world, but also one of its most feared.
Guding this exciting foundation to the big screen is director J.C. Chandor, who’s hoping to bring the dramatic gravitas of his previous films, like Margin Call, All Is Lost and A Most Violent Year, to the Marvel Universe. And it was his intent on bringing such a core to the action here that he spoke to our Peter Gray about, following an exclusive look at extended footage from the film.
As Kraven prepares to hunt down multiplexes the world over this week, Chandor touched on which classic comic book film he looked to as a structure for his own film, what impressed him the most about star Taylor-Johnson’s physicality, and what he took from the source material.
With this being based on a Marvel character, did you find there were any storylines or specific moments from the comics that you felt were essential to be included in the film?
Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, the character had never been put on film before, so we really were starting from scratch. We knew we wanted to structure it like it’s a classic origin story following the structures of what I kind of grew up on. My first film I ever saw was Richard Donner’s Superman. I really wanted to structure the film like a classic origin story. But this is the origin of a villain, so that gave us a bunch of challenges and opportunities, and we went back and dug through the source material. At our core this storyline of Kraven, that ends at Kraven’s last hunt, is a family saga. It’s sort of this tragic, yet amazingly fun wild ride, but it ends as a real family saga. So, your countrymen, you know, Russell Crowe and Levi Miller, who plays the young Kraven, the story starts with them and the formation of this path to villainy. And then Aaron (Taylor-Johnson) and Russell kind of pick up the mantle for the rest of the story. But there’s amazing action beats and all these other crazy things going on, but, at its core, it’s a family saga.
Speaking of Aaron, I feel like so many of his performances are so transformative. Was there anything that he brought to the role of Kraven that was unexpected? That, perhaps, shifted your perspective of him as a character?
Yeah, I think it was that I was hoping….I won’t say it was a total surprise, (but) the most exciting thing about my job with casting is you have hopes and then (the actor) does new things and surprises you in ways, and one of my hopes was, because Aaron comes from this, is a dancing background. If you go back to his childhood, he is unbelievable in his ability to move and take direction and execute that. I mean, the guy can move any part of his face at any time. He has unbelievable body control, and at a larger scale, when people get a chance to see the film, they will see that physical transformation of this character. While there is still this emotional core that’s the heart of the film, there’s also this very intense physical transformation where he’s still human, but he moves like an animal, and his ability to bring that level of reality to all these stunts that we asked him to do were….(audiences) will see that it’s a pretty unbelievable trick that he pulled off. And it’s beautiful in a weird way to see what he’s able to do.
I agree. I’m very excited to see everything in its entirety. And I will say (like Russell’s character says) I too, don’t trust anybody that doesn’t like Tony Bennett.
(Laughs) There’s a couple of great Russell Crowe one liners that he throws in here. We love that he brought that. I’m pretty sure he did, and it was such a great line. We weren’t taking ourselves seriously. There’s some fun in humour in there.
Kraven the Hunter is screening exclusively in Australian theatres from December 12th, 2024.
