Aaron Taylor-Johnson Looks Absolutely Ripped in the 'Kraven the Hunter' Trailer

You know the actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson? He's a bit of a comic-book movie veteran. Taylor-Johnson played Pietro Maximoff in Avengers: Age of Ultron and Kick-Ass in Kick-Ass. Now, a new trailer shows ATJ suiting up as Kraven the Hunter—the longtime Spider-Man adversary—in Sony's next villain solo franchise, after Venom and Morbius.

In the comic books, Kraven the Hunter (legal name: Sergei Nikolaievich Kravinoff) hails from a different Eastern European country: Volgograd, Russia. He's a big-game hunter who traditionally wears a big, silly fur coat and cheetah pants, and rocks a mustache-goatee combo. Eventually, he becomes obsessed with our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, and makes it his life's mission to find and kill him. (He actually somewhat succeeds at one point, in one of the most famous Spider-Man comic book runs.) Sure, Sony's Venom worked out to an extent, becoming a slightly campy, very gory take on the antihero. Morbius was more questionable, with Jared Leto in full Jared Leto batshit mode as a rabid vampire. In the wrong hands, Kraven the Hunter could reach Saturday Night Live! impression levels of mocking the 1960s' American idea of what a Russian lion-tigers-and-bears-hunter looks like.

Well, Taylor-Johnson may not have the campy Russian accent in the first official trailer above, but someone else does. Russell Crowe—who just butchered a completely different accent in Thor: Love & Thunder—is back to do the same here. (But in Russian!) He seems to have treated Kraven very poorly, looking like he might end up as one of the film's villains. Thankfully, ATJ looks appropriately badass as Kraven, whose animal instincts were born from an event in which lion's blood mixed with his own.

Kraven the Hunter hits theaters on October 6, 2023. Until then, enjoy this comics-accurate photo of ATJ as Kraven. donning his iconic shirtless lion's jacket.

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