Let me just say I gave this movie a vote of 2% confidence based on the previews I watched. I can't even explain what it is, but there's just something about this movie that made it tough to want to watch.
And I hate a movie that looks good but that's objectively not a good movie. To start with, the texture is nice and it looks like a high-budget movie (which it is anyway) but there's something totally off about it. I also hate when they introduce nitty-gritty family drama in a movie like this. If I'm watching fiction it needs to be fictioning, so why between my escape are you bringing familiarity gademit. This, and some other things I'll talk about below, make it feel like the plot is all over the place, and that's not the kind of chaos I self-soothe to...
Detailed Spoiler
Let's get deeper into the spoilers right away so you have a solid excuse not to watch it if anyone asks. But then again, I say spoilers unnecessarily because this movie spoiled itself... Kraven escapes prison and puts up a spirited and gory fight. He then runs into a snowstorm and meets a wolf. They have ✨ eye contact and the wolf backs off after serving us with something like wolfish allure. There's a plane waiting for him in the eye of the storm and it takes off once he's inside. The snowstorm bit made me check the release dates on Furiosa and Kraven because it triggered a memory, just putting this out there.
Things settle down a bit and I want to know if this is an origin story.
I'm answered when, some scenes later, we're taken to sixteen years ago where we encounter some interesting plot management.
By the way, there are comics on Kraven the Hunter that may make more sense than this film, I think.
The Hate Watch
We had agreed that this was a hate-watch right from the start, but this is the point at which we rolled up our sleeves and really let the hate loose.
In the spirit of introducing adventure and scene variety (I guess), we're taken from the snowstorm to a school in Russia then Tanzania, then Northern Ghana, and I can't keep up because the landscape and the location titles are all sus. We're reading tarot cards with a young girl and her granny, and on her first shuffle, she's discovered to be one of The Ones and earns a potion that granny keeps with her ALL the time, waiting for the right time to hand it to her. Okay now retrieve the earlier scene of the boy; the Russian boy and his dad are in Ghana hunting animals for trophies. Those pieces of sh**.
We have a Mzee Wa Vitendawili on our hands, guys. Be careful, he's a live one. Literally every sentence he speaks is a metaphor in a deep voice that sounds very wise and I'm immediately sick of it.
The old, wise-sounding, rambling guy (Russel Crowe, who I adore in other movies but not this one) is on a walk with a younger guy who wants to be his partner. He's dismissed with more rambling wise words and I can't get sicker when they insert some deep spooky music for whatever reason and I have to catch my breath.
Phew...
Then old guy goes hunting with his son and they come across a lion. Now let me tell you about this lion: it's RIPPED. It probably deadlifts the zebras it later has for breakfast. It's a lion like you've never seen a lion before.
Anyway, it wants to take the boy away for some reason and then the girl who was promoted to Tarot Goddess status seconds ago shows up in the next scene.
🦅🦅🦅 Guys, we're taking the tarot cards literally! That's what we're doing. So the lion carries the boy to a clearing right behind where Tarot Girl is, and her parents let her wander off into the bush. Where there are wild animals. So that the plot can plot. Wow. Yea, then Tarot girl remembers her chat with Granny which was luckily recent enough to still be extremely fresh in her memory. She sees that the boy is injured and immediately administers the potion. Some magic/chemistry/biology takes place where we see that the lion's blood is mixed with the boy's blood etc etc.
He wakes up to a lecture from his wise, rambling dad (I'm SO glad I'm not that boy) and then there's a brief family reunion with the boy, his brother, and their dad. Here, we see some more of their strained family dynamics. He heals and goes back home where his dad tells him he's going back to Russia because America is making him weak; definitely an original thought right there.
So anyway he decides to run away and as he's walking along the building's ledge he slips *Alice says that this is exactly where he discovers he has superpowers.
Could she be right? Is she wrong???
She's right.
He lands on his feet (because he's a cat and he also just packed the tarot card that showed him that he's a lion after showing it to us). He gets into a massive field just in time for a buffalo stampede and as he crouches in fear they show him no interest. Until he looks up and one is standing in front of him as if trying to tell him something, so more ✨eye contact✨
Keep Up
He gets into a forest now and remembers his dad's wise words that fear will consume him and make him weak. He makes a spear and starts to play with it. No, guys, he makes an ACTUAL spear- you know what, never mind. He sees a deer then gets excited and starts to chase it till it jumps off someplace and he jumps after it, then he runs up a tree and uses his lion eyes to zoom in on a spot in the distance where he hears a gunshot coming from.
He goes up to the guys like the G that he is and then meets them up in a field. They have a tiff and he beats the guys to death which prompts Rachel to ask: if he has superhuman strength, should his mass remain the same? Shouldn't he be bigger to reflect his additional power? Ponder on that.
We're brought back to the modern age and we find out that, as Jan points out, despite all the preparations made for the prison escape, no one thought to bring him a change of clothes. Or maybe it's because he's lion and gritty and macho and tough and all these qualities are best described with sweat-stained clothes and awful bodily hygiene.
A Quick Recap
This guy has superhuman abilities and is the chosen one according to Tarot Girl's tarots and a list of related activities. Which makes me wonder, does his father know about all this? Because he's always talking about hunters and predators. Sounds like he's keeping secrets despite being a chronic rambler but I'm not sure. Because honestly he could have saved everyone the misery and just told us.
He also has a lot of money and means apparently, so you could say that all the stars were lined up for him to become a superhero/god/half-breed/whatever he's becoming. I get distant recollections of Wolverine, and I start to wonder if my exasperation with the movie is because it feels like I've watched it before and know how it goes. This film very much feels like an adaptation of Wolverine, but one that's trying to do the most in a way that's really annoying.
Back to Pain
Back in the film, there's a funeral and Kraven is watching a girl giving a eulogy keenly (like the hunter he is I guess). Then he talks to her and just as I'm about to slam the gavel down on his creep status, he pulls out the lion tarot card and she recognizes him, letting him know that she still carries the whole deck. They talk for a bit and I can't make much of it for some reason. But that's probably a "me" problem because I'm getting tired of this torture.
Actually, Never Mind
The movie hangs at this point and Jan says that it gave up on itself, which would have been the most reasonable thing to do. Maybe it saw how much pain and suffering it put us through and decided to do the noble thing. Anyway, the movie comes to an end for us at this point, and honestly, I hated it even more than I thought I would. There's way too much going on almost every step of the way. The plot jumps from one point to another too fast, and while this may help develop the story, it also makes it feel like the production was working on a tight deadline/budget and with limits to how much B-roll they produce because there's no reason why this movie should be days long, damn.
As we pause the movie to leave, we discover that we're just a quarterway through the film. It feels like we've been watching it for hours so what is this??? Mutia and Phil walk in and ask us why we're watching this film. They threaten us with spoilers but we tell them that saying the movie gets worse isn't really a spoiler because we can see the trajectory that the film is on, and it's not a good one. Mutia mentions a rhino and I'm too tired to get more tired. I've discovered the upper limit of tired. AND THERE'S STILL SO MUCH MORE LEFT HOWWW 😭😭
I may have gotten in over my head with this one. It will be self-care to quit at this point and never look back.
Release me please 🥺
Why would Marvel do this???
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