I learned today that Aaron Taylor-Johnson is going to be Kraven the Hunter in the Marvel movie when it comes out in October. This is old news for a lot of people. But I liked Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Kickass, in Godzilla, and in Avengers: Age of Ultron. As an aside, I still can't believe he got so swole between Kickass and his other movies but lots of young men go through this kind of transformation these days with things like Crossfit, personal trainers and gyms, and body shaming being ubiquitous in schools built within neighborhoods of privilege. That and protein, protein, protein. So, because I like Aaron Taylor-Johnson, I will probably go and see this show in the theater on opening weekend. But that doesn't mean I don't have questions.
The big one that I have is why are we getting this movie in the first place? I mean...I've read a few Spiderman comics. I even subscribed to them back in the nineties and had a "box" at the local comic book store where I could pick up my issues. But I was never excited to read the Kraven the Hunter storylines when they showed up. I was always just wanting more Peter Parker. The next question I have is why is this thing going to be rated-R? It seems like an odd choice made by Sony unless you consider that Joaquin Phoenix's Joker was also rated-R, and it made a ton of money (it joined the billion dollar club). So is Sony trying to make its own Joker? Apparently, the answer is yes. But is it the right thing to do? Should we be excited by this? To answer these questions requires us to look at history just a wee bit.
The comic books all of these characters appeared in were all approved by the Comic Code Authority, and later on, they were rated Teen (13+). That also included Kraven's Last Hunt, which is a story a lot of people love. So, by this alone, an "R-rating" doesn't make any sense. Times have also changed a lot though. Back in the 1960's, being a "big game hunter" was respected, and it had an element of "cool" to it. So Kraven the Hunter would have had this formidable aura about him of man vs. beast that just doesn't exist anymore. These days, big game hunting elicits an "Ewww...what an @$$hole" vibe, because it is mostly just rich white douches shooting staged hunts and killing endangered animals. I'm not seeing how they could make this character (in any way) sympathetic.
But then again, Joker was a character that wasn't originally meant to be rated-R. But it does work now because the R-rating shows how damaged he is (mentally) while making him a mirror for society. He is in many ways an everyman now. Joker is an allegory for the modern world's ills (and the problem with gun violence in America). There's a ton of stuff there to sympathize with. But Kraven? He's just a rich dude that claims to fight animals fairly, but he also takes a magic potion to give him super strength, speed, etc. Kraven could be really interesting if Sony could work a deal with Disney and thus obtain some X-Men rights to use the Savage Land, which is the prehistoric area that is attached to Antarctica. Dinosaurs are both big game and deemed acceptable to hunt by modern standards. So that would get rid of the "ewww" factor. But Sony doesn't have X-Men rights. They only have Spiderman to work with (at least as far as I know).
Anyone else out there (reading my words) have any thoughts about a Kraven the Hunter movie?
