Kraven

What in the blue hell? Sony has just been scraping the bottom of the barrel to meet the requirements to keep the Spider-Man properties. No one in their right mind would want a Kraven movie, but here we are. Down is up, up is down. 

I've said this before, I'm kind of a movie mascochist. No one makes me do this. I do this to myself. After enduring Madame Web, I had to move on down the list to this movie. It is everything I thought it was. A stupid movie, but there's something more at work here. Lemme get into it.

• I feel for the lead star, Aaron Taylor-Johnson. He clearly bulked up for the role and really thought it was going to be something special. This movie is not going to help his case. He's fine, but this is a dumb movie and you're the face of it, bro.
• Remember how I said you can tell Aaron bulked up? Yeah, he walks around like a guy that just did arm day at the gym. The way he poses and all his action scenes are there to show off his work. Good job, my guy.
• Do you also remember when Russel Crowe was somebody? Hard to tell with this movie. Can't fault him for picking up a check. To be fair, he did to the last Thor movie. Bet the check for that one was bigger than this?
• I know Ariana Debose is better than this. Hard to tell from this movie. I know the script is terrible, but you gotta make lemons out of lemonade. She did not do that at all.
• Some of the hand to hand fight stuff was cool, but by and large, the action was very ridiculous. Very clear wire work that was amateurish. I don't need to see ol' boy "jumping" around like an animal. 
• Kraven got his powers from some magical potion, but they went out of their way to show a lion's blood dripping into his open wound...for what? He's now part lion? Get outta here. The origin is already ridiculous. This is like putting a hat on a hat.
• They name drop Miles Warren. Us comic nerds know him as the Jackyl. The guy that made the Spider Clones and other convient sciencey nonsense for bad guys. This is important for the rest of my critique. 
• Comic books are great because you can have goofy ass characters and don't have to explain everything. Then filming geniuses want to take those characters and make them more realistic, in turn making them completely stupid. So in this movie we had "Rhino". He looks stupid visually, they save the money shot of him to the end and it's still ridiculous. This movie does not need him. Oh, he was given his powers by Miles Warren.
• They were a little more subtle with Kraven's brother, Dimitri. As I was watching, I was like, "Wait, are they doing The Chameleon?". He kept having dialogue saying he always just blends into the background, it's what he's best at. He even specifically says he's like a Chameleon, hitting the nerds over the head with a hammer, like we couldn't pick up what was happening. At the end of the movie (spoiler!) he becomes the next big bad and can now shape shift. Where did he get these powers? Miles Warren.
• Because this movie wants to stuff in as many C-Tier Spider-Man characters as they can, we also get a bad guy named, the Foriegner. He's a blink and you miss it bad guy, but in this movie he gets a glow up. He has mind control or something. They present his powers weird and I don't care to do any research. Maybe he also got his powers from Miles Warren, but I don't care to double check that. Ultimately, he means nothing in the grand scheme of the movie.
• The whole movie is set up to serve the iconic "Kraven sitting in a chair" shot. It felt like they were checking the box, as it serves ZERO purpose.

This movie is as terrible as you think it is. I say this movie is worse than Madame Web only because it tries so much harder. Madame Web was lazy and didn't give two shits about what you thought. This movie is trying really hard to impress you and in doing so, fails miserably. Look at my cool action scenes, bro! Nah, I'm good.

Madame Web

I'm a deeply sick, disturbed man. Multiple people told me DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE. Saying those words are like catnip to me. I was gonna watch it. All I needed was time and opportunity. Over the labor day weekend, I was doing chores. Okay, I was putting comic boards into comic bags for my haul for the last couple of weeks. I figured, I'm doing something mindless, let me watch a mindless movie.

That's when I found the time for this movie. Is this movie as bad as they said? Yes. Absolutely. It was a waste of my time, but I wasn't raging at the stupidness of this movie like I thought I would. I was laughing because I couldn't believe this was a serious movie made with real money. This movie is par for the course on the terribleness of all the Sony Spider-Man properties. I'm excluding the last two Venom movies because I haven't watched them yet, but I have no doubt they are equally terrible.

Let's get into my thoughts:

• I've never seen anyone with less charisma or more bored line delivery than Dakota Johnson. I don't understand how she keeps getting cast in movies. She had the same line delievery the whole movie. Bored indifference. She went to the Paul Walker school of acting.
• For a movie with Spider-people (kind of) this movie's devoid of any real action scenes. A couple of boring ass chase scenes do not count.
• Adam Scott, what are you even doing here? That's the whole comment.
• Sydney Sweeney. I'd rank her #2 next to Dakota Johnson. She's also someone who I don't understand how they keep getting acting roles. Her acting is also stiff.
• The whole premise of the movie is a guy has a dream that one day in 20 years, some young girls are going to kill him? So he spends all his resources based ON A DREAM. WHAT?!
• The origin of this movie is as dumb as the origin in Morbius. Let's go to South America and get powers from weird animals.
• The CG stuntmen in the action scenes are terrible. Any spider-man type jumping looks goofy as hell.
• The convoluted way they get to Madame Web (I forgot her name and I don't care to look it up) is also stupid. The Final Destination movies did premonition stuff better. They go to that narrative device way too many times here.
• This movie did a poor job making me care about anyone. The main characters are getting chased and meh. Didn't care.
• I'm glad Isabella Merced moved on to bigger and better things. (Superman and Last of Us). She is the only actor I liked in this movie. 
• I've never seen a more boring climax in an "action" movie. And leaving Madame Web looking like Professor X at the end. Well okay then.

There's so many dumb things in this movie I know I am missing them all. I would tell you to avoid this movie at all costs, but maybe you have the same, sick problem I do. You WANT to watch the bad stuff. I'm glad I never paid money to see this, but I did pay with my valuable time.