Kraven the Hunter star Aaron Taylor-Johnson recently explained why he views the upcoming R-rated Marvel movie as a family drama instead of an action flick.
While the marketing for Kraven the Hunter has highlighted the movie’s R-rated action sequences, Taylor-Johnson shared during an interview with GamesRadar+ that he considers the real focus of the movie to be on the messy relationship between Sergei Kravinoff, his half-brother Dmitri Smerdyakov (Fred Hechinger), and their gangster father Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe).
Why does Aaron Taylor-Johnson think Kraven the Hunter is a family drama?
“I think at the core of the story, there’s a real family drama,” Taylor-Johnson told GamesRadar+. “You see these two boys being brought up in a very toxic environment. Their father is this Russian gangster, the head of this mobster gang, and eventually he wants to hand the business over. That kind of sends my character down this journey of becoming a vigilante, and his path to being a villain.”
Taylor-Johnson also revealed that Sergei is very fond of his half-brother Dmitri and wants no harm to come to him. “He is the only thing he [Sergei/Kraven] cares about and wants to protect with all his life, but I think ends up getting caught up in everything [that] might put him in harm’s way, and he has to live with that. And so there is a real strong heart and soul to this story,” he added.
Kraven the Hunter may have been rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “strong bloody violence, and language,” but, according to director J.C. Chandor, that mature rating also allowed the Marvel movie to dive into some deeper, darker territory surrounding Sergei’s troubled upbringing.
“It sounds weird to say it, but the R-rating allowed us to do some things… There’s a history of mental illness,” explained Chandor. “You’re gonna see a couple things that happen here, where you’re like, ‘whoa’ that actually refers more to the way these kids were brought up.”
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Besides the aforementioned actors, Kraven the Hunter stars Ariana DeBose as Calypso Ezili, Alessandro Nivola as Aleksei Sytsevich/Rhino, and Christopher Abbott as the Foreigner. The Marvel movie will be the sixth installment in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, a franchise largely centered around key allies and antagonists from the Spider-Man mythos.
Kraven the Hunter hits theaters on December 13, 2024.
