It's a movie.
The Movies & A Meal Podcast
Kraven the Hunter
(upbeat music) - Hi folks, welcome to our stuff on Movies and a Meal, a podcast where we talk about movies and other things while we eat Keith here. And as well as I'm joined by Ben. - Sup what? - Brad. - What's up? - We get a double what's up. This week we have, well, I will call it a duty to review Craven the Hunter. The latest Sony/Marvel offering starring Arendelle Johnson, Arendelle Bose, Russell Crowe, Alessandro Nebula, and many more. So to kick things off, Brad, what is Craven the Hunter all about? - All right, so I'm Rick Hersey, IMDB. Craven's complex relationship with his ruthless father, Nikalai Cravenoff 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. - All right, well, I think with these superhero movies, Brad, it's best that you start off, because you always have something to say. - Yeah, this is a movie. Sony's kind of been firing blanks as of late. Venom, the last dance was good to okay. And out of web was God-awful. I'll have more on that when we do our actual rankings. But this movie is in between. Arendelle or Johnson, I think he did an okay job as Sierra Gay Cravenoff. He has like the Moxie and Swagger, another man who thinks of himself unbeatable. And I do love his relationship with the Metri. They do have that brotherly bond. It's just, I don't know. I never get like any emotional heft. You see anger and violence as of all that. You don't see anything else. And I think that kind of hurts his performance. Fred, is it Hesseinger? - Hesseinger? - Sure, from White Lotus. And we just saw him in Gladiator. - Yeah, as the Metri Cravenoff. I think he's the emotional character in the heft in this movie. I mean, you see the fear, you see his pain. I think he's honestly the most relatable character out of most of the big, big main stars here, in my opinion. Except for maybe Ariana Bose to an extent, but that's something else. But I mean, he's just, he's like a normal kid and a normal person in this mob world. And Russell Crowe, I'll end up with Russell Crowe. I'll let you all have at it. But Russell Crowe's Nick and I Cravenoff. I mean, he plays the hyper masculine mob boss father who has the tough love approach. And I mean, Crowe does a good job with that. But, I mean, the Russian accent though, it's... (both laughing) So, I don't know who wants to go next. Ben, Keith, Ben, what you thinking? - I think when we reviewed Madam Webb, I was kind of upset about how Sony basically looked down the audience of just like, you guys are so dumb. You're so star for superhero movies. We'll just throw out anything. You guys will eat it up and I was kind of angry. At this point, we've got three Sony superhero movies within 12 months and I'm just exhausted really and kind of resigned to the fact that we're kind of on the, I think we're kind of on the downslope of all comic book movies. We've been doing superhero movies for like, since the MCU, yeah, before the MCU. - Yeah, yeah, for maybe 20, you know, almost 20, almost 30 years now, 25 years. - What was it, 97 with Blade? - Yeah, it's a boring movie. I was struggling to stay awake. I will agree with Brad that I think there's some elements about the decent movie in here. I think Aaron and Taylor Johnson, who was played superheroist previously with, you know, Quicksilver and Avengers age Voltron, even back to his kick ass days, which I think is a more compelling character than this one. He has the chops to do it. Ariana DeBose and Russell Crowe have obviously won Oscars. It's just like, I see threads and maybe that's what makes it more disappointing, is that I see elements of a decent movie, but we're not going to get it. And also, at this point, I'm just happy to see the Sony shared universe experiment over. - Ben, IGN said that the plot is almost shot to shot of Batman Begins. - It kind of is. It's just not, it's done terribly. I don't think there's a lot of characterization. They'll spend a 10 minute scene on Callisto, Ariana DeBose's character's origin. But I don't really like Teeter Point. I don't really get a sense of really what motivates Craven to be kind of a punisher slash Tarzan slash, a little bit of Dr. Doolittle. I thought that Russell Crowe's Russian bad guy. You could pretty much interchange that with Ray Winstone's bad guy from Black Widow movie, of just like bad Russian guy. Don't waste your time, I say, if you're on the fence. But Keith. - You give people a little perspective. We did make a day of it in which we ate Waffle House before and then, you know, something loaded after. But I slept through a good portion of this movie. I did watch the first eight minutes again online, so I know I watched all that. I think I fell asleep after that and woke up during, there was long exposition. And you know, that's on me. On paper, this should have been fun. You have a hero who has the powers, as you said, a little bit of Tarzan, a little Dr. Doolittle, as this badass hunter. This was not fun at all. I will say the action, like you guys said, was pretty good. Compare it to the-- - I wasn't saying it's good, but it was okay. - Well, it was okay. But you don't compare it. - But you don't compare it. But compare it also to Red One. I mean, you know, if you have an opening sequence in both these movies, this one was tons better. I thought Alessandro Novella had the most fun of anybody, but also 'cause he's one of my favorites. You know-- - That character's terrible, but I also understand your point. - He died into it, at least. But you're right, these people, I thought it was Ray Winstone for a second. I didn't look at the craze. - Ray. - Yeah, clearly they were interchangeable, but eventually I figured out it was Russell Crowe. You think on paper, this would be a lot of fun, but if you don't know Craven at all, they don't tell you enough about Calypso, they don't tell you enough about Craven. The effort that went into this is almost zero. - Especially with Calypso, it's just, they did nothing with her. She's the woman in the chair, the stereotypical sidekick. And I mean, it's just, there's so much character that's missing story-wise in this. - I was Sandra Evola as a Lexi Sistovich, and I'm probably butchering that. - The Rhino. - Yeah, he is the Rhino. He is a cookie cutter villain. - Oh, totally. - And I mean, he is a tad insane. He tries to show it, he tries to come off as, it just comes off too hammy. - The problem with this movie, and the problem with Sony's Spider-Man extended universe overall, is that they just try to force-feed this entire thing and jump-start it. Venom has stories where he's an anti-hero, or even a hero. Morbius has been a good guy at some points. Craven has never been a good guy at all, and so they've just kind of made him a generic superhero. - Certainly Marvel movies in general, as a way of just jumping from one scene to another with no setup, or connection, or story beat, or nothing. And it's all putting at best, and nonsensical at worst, and at times, this came off as nonsensical. It's time to go back to the drawing board, and for Sony, unfortunately, it might be at its worst, where they'll just drop all these Spider-Man and Jason characters. I mean, the news that you've not heard is that basically right now they're focusing on Spider-Man 4, and Spider-Man, was it beyond the Spider-Verse, is that the third movie? So, they have no more of these down-the-pipe line, and they might be the last vestige of a dying breed where, back in the day, you had like four or five different movie studios that owned the Marvel characters, and the MCU has gotten all but one. The MCU might be Thanos here. Disney might be Thanos there. They're collecting all the affinity stones, and they might just have, that they might, and if this is any sign, and this is me reading two of the lines, they might have the final stone. - Honestly, I think Sony hopefully learned her lesson too. It's like, look, you can't have the adjacent characters, you need the main guy. - All right, well, we're done with this movie. Let's give the ratings. Let's give our ratings. - Okay. - You got more stuff to say? - No, I'm looking. I've got my notes. I think I can call it. I think I can call it. - What did I have to say? It's a terrible movie. - Yeah, I mean, it's just-- - They tried, I guess, a J.C. Chandor, who's the director, is a legit director. - He is, that was the depressing part. - There's bones to this movie. It's just, they're not connected correctly. The foot bone's connected to the head bone, so. - All right, I'm gonna lead it off unless you have anything else, right? - Go ahead. You're pushing me through a go ahead, man. - Yeah, 'cause I just like, they've already stolen two hours of my life. I don't need to see anything. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go one and a half. That's probably even generous, but I'm gonna go one and a half. - I'll go the same. Like I said, me falling asleep is not on them. That was just, I don't know. - No, it's on them. - It's on them. - It's on them, because that first half of that movie was not good. - I enjoy, I enjoyed, Aaron Taylor Johnson trying to make this. He gave what he could. I liked enough of the story, I understood. I'll give it one and a half. - I know. I'm gonna give it two. And the only reason I'm giving it two is it's better than some of the other movies I gave one and a half. - Well, I was with you, but I gave Venom the last dance the two stars. - Venom is at the top tier. That's not saying it's great, it's just the best of what we got. And Madder Webb is just this nonsensical hodgepodge of whatever exactly, so. - So, Rotten Madder's critics and audience. - By God, Keith. - All right, well, I didn't look at all, but critics are like us, we're rude people. I will go 15%. Fans, fans like this, I'll go 80. - Okay, I'll go a little higher because whatever. But I'll go like 22 on the critics audience, a little bit more forgiving. I'll go like 54. - Keith, your 15% was for Morbius. - Okay. - This movie had 1% better, 16%. - If you just said this movie got 1% of Rotten Madder's, I would have been like yeah. - 16% for critics, 110 reviews. Audience, 73%, 1,000 plus reviews. - That's the same group that's pushing red one up to 91% audience approval. - Let's just face it, guys. We're not the audience. - We're in critics, we're not the audience. - Needless to say, there is no audience says. So we can only get the one side and the side that's agree with. So critics can set this courtesy of Rotten Madder's, claiming no trophies with its rote story and shot these special effects. Craving 100 turns out to be a paper tiger. So you bring the box office. - Okay, we do box homes. - Number one, we won't do a guessing game here. Number one was Moana 2, $26.6 million, three week total of $337.5 million. Wicked at number two, $22.5 million, four week total of $359 million. Number three, the aforementioned Craven 100, $11 million in its opening weekend. Number four, Gladiator 2, $7.8 million this week, four week total of $145.9 million. Craven 100 is not the worst opening weekend, oh, opening movie this weekend, though that goes to number five, Lord of the Rings, the War of War, I'm probably butchering that. I don't care, $4.6 million in its opening weekend and it's finished and finished. - Okay, so Brad, you prepared two rankings, right? You've prepared what is the highest ranking of these Sony movies that you have your own individual ranking, so let's go ahead. - We have my rankings and then we have the critics, the Rotten Madder's critics rankings. - Okay. - So, needless choice, what's your one you want to do first? - So I will do mine first and mine is pretty close to the tomatoes, except there's one I have lower, but number one is Venom for me. I, good story, good character development with good acting from Tom Hardy, just had a bad villain, honestly. So, and too much dark CGI confusion. So, number two is Venom The Last Dance for Me. It's a, okay story with great bonding moments with the Venom symbiote, Nettie Brock, some unnecessary scene, but still, it's upper echelon Sony almost by default. Number three is actually this movie for me. It's like I said, it's got a decent family drama and okay acting from Cravenol's decent action, but the villain's bad character development is at best. Number four, Venom Let There Be Carnage, I think that's the controversial pick. The character development took a back seat to the cool moments they tried to do with Carnage, it just didn't work for me. It's why it's number four. Number five is Morbius because, well, it's not Mormon time, bad acting, bad character development, but decent CGI moments and action pieces. Put that above. Number six, Madam Webb, because when Ben Parker, the eighth character on the pecking order is the best thing of a movie, you have problems. So, okay. - And Rotten Tomatoes, he says pretty much that, except for me. - It's a little different. The highest Rotten Tomatoes movie is actually Venom Let There Be Carnage. It is number one at 57%. That's your critics. - Okay. - Number two is Venom The Last Dance at 36%. Number three is Venom at 30%. And then pretty close to each other, craving 100's number four at 16. Morbius is number five at 15, and Madam Webb brings up the rear at 11%. - Do we want to do a post-mortem for Sony Universe? I mean, is it over? - No, good riddance. - No. - But is there any way they could make a since the sixth movie with Spider-Man? - I'm sure they can. - I mean, anything can happen. - Honestly, what's probably going to have to happen is they're going to have to give the rights to Marvel. - Yeah. - Oh, I see what you're saying. - So, they're going to have to give the rights to Disney, and then they can bring Spider-Man back and do whatever. Or they try to recast Spider-Man, but even if they do that, I don't know how well it would be accepted. 'Cause let's be honest, Sony's not top tier right now when it comes to the fans. But I say that and they get a 73% on a terrible movie. - Well, Tom Holland, Tom Holland. - Tom Holland is signed to do four. - Yeah. - And other people are signed to be come back, so. - Yeah. - Okay, why don't we just wrap this door and episode up? 'Cause I'm tired of talking about this, so. - All right. You want to do the plugs key. - Sure, you can reach us at moviesnamiel.og at gmail.com. Moviesnamiel on X/Twitter. Give us a listen on app podcasts, Spotify, or we'll find you podcasts. - Okay, so for this episode of Moviesnamiel, I'm Ben. - And Keith's right! Peace! (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)