Kraven the Hunter Interview: Aaron Taylor-Johnson on how this is different from other superhero movies

Last Updated on January 2, 2025

A few weeks ago, I got the opportunity to have a chat with Aaron Taylor-Johnson about his long-gestating Spider-Verse entry, Kraven the Hunter. In it, he plays the titular character Sergei Kravinoff, who becomes a global manhunter named Kraven, who, in the comics, eventually becomes one of Spider-Man’s most infamous foes. However, the Kraven we see on-screen here is distinctly heroic, with seeds being planted hinting at his eventual transformation, which I suppose is being planned for future instalments should the film perform well enough at the box office to deliver a sequel (or a role in Spider-Man 4).

One thing to note is that I hadn’t actually seen Kraven the Hunter when I interviewed Taylor-Johnson. Sony opted to show us about twenty minutes of footage, as the director, J.C. Chandor, was still working on his final cut at the time of the press day. In the interview, Johnson discussed with me how going for a hard-R rating was important, as they wanted to make this grounded and hardcore. Notably, he also called Kraven a gangster movie, with them going for that kind of vibe as their way of paving the way for Kraven to ultimately become a super-villain with whom Spider-Man can tangle. Check out the interview (embedded above) and read my review of the finished film HERE. 

Directed by Chandor from a screenplay by Richard Wenk, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway, Kraven the Hunter is the action-packed, R-rated, standalone story of how one of Marvel’s most iconic villains came to be. Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays Kraven, a man whose complex relationship with his ruthless gangster 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.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson stars as the title character and is joined in the cast by Ariana DeBose as voodoo priestess Calypso Ezili, Fred Hechinger as Kraven’s estranged brother and master of disguise Dmitri Smerdyakov / Chameleon, Alessandro Nivola as Russian mercenary and human-rhino hybrid Aleksei Sytsevich / Rhino, Christopher Abbott as a mercenary and assassin known as the Foreigner, and Russell Crowe as Kraven’s estranged father, the ruthless crime lord Nikolai Kravinoff.