Kraven the Hunter (4 Stars)

I've reached the point where I don't expect Marvel films to be good. Most of them are average quality at best. So I went to the cinema today expecting nothing, and I walked out pleasantly surprised at the high quality. "Kraven the Hunter" has received many negative reviews, but most of them were written before it was released. Were the critics given advance screenings? Or did they just assume it would be bad and wrote their reviews without seeing the film? I suspect the latter.

The theme of the film is identical to "Wicked", which I watched yesterday. Kraven is a villain in Marvel comics, who first appeared in "Amazing Spider-Man" in 1964. The film shows him as a good man with noble motives. The posters have the tagline, "Villains aren't born, they're made". We don't see him developing into a villain, so that's something we could expect in "Kraven Part Two", if it's ever made.

At the moment it seems unlikely that there will ever be a sequel. Sony has announced that it will no longer continue with its Spider-Man Shared Universe (SSU), a series of films featuring characters connected with Spider-Man. Most of them were box office failures, whether the reason was Marvel fatigue or simply poor quality. It's a shame that the decision was made to cancel the Kraven character even before the film was released. Aaron Taylor-Johnson puts on an outstanding performance, as always, and he deserves a second chance. Maybe he can appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), if they ever step back and stop making multiverse films.