Reviews - 'Kraven The Hunter' and 'Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim' Both Expect The Fans to Settle For Less

WBD's 'Lord of the Rings' prequel toon plays closer to 'Star Wars: The Clone Wars' than 'Into the Spider-Verse' while Sony's final (?) "SSU" entry makes 'Snake Eyes' look good.

In a skewed irony, both of this weekend’s big new releases are pretty blatant cases of “IP for the sake of IP.” In one corner, you have a $31 million animated prequel to Peter Jackson’s various Middle Earth movies that was partially about making sure New Line didn’t lose the movie rights to J.R.R. Tokein’s stories. And in the other corner, you have a $110 million live-action anti-hero origin story for a Spider-Man villain in a movie with no explicit connection (beyond a few visual references to The Daily Bugle) to either Sony’s prior Spider-Man franchises or the previous “Sony’s Spider-Man Universe” flicks. They are both a reminder that successful films and shows predicated on existing IPs generally broke out because of specific circumstances related to their production and release. The brand is supposed to be the bait.

Neither film takes full advantage of the alleged safety that might come with their respective brands or how they stray from the norm. The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is an inferior incarnation of Disney’s Gargoyles, sans those pesky gargoyles. Regarding tone and onscreen action, it also lacks the “because we can” nerve of Robert Zemeckis’ Beuwulf. In terms of using theatrical animation to leap beyond what is possible in live-action, it’s closer to Star Wars: The Clone Wars than Into the Spider-Verse or Mutant Mayhem. Kraven the Hunter plays like a blend of other franchises (Richard Wenk wrote all three of Denzel Washington’s Equalizer movies) and origin stories (Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins, Uncharted, etc.). Concurrently, it uses that R-rating only for a few blood-and-gore setpieces.

Why Kraven the Hunter is bad…

Kraven pulls off the trick of being overlong (127 minutes, the longest of Sony’s live-action “SSU” flicks) and seemingly stitched together in the editing room, with little coherent storytelling beyond Sony’s franchise Mad Libs manual. Would you believe this film starts with a big-deal action sequence and then bolts back to the past with our hero and his literal or metaphorical brother parting ways after a mutual trauma? If you said yes, you’ve seen Uncharted and Morbius. In this case, the unforgivably dull flashback is an unthinkable 15 minutes long. While Russell Crowe offers some unkosher ham, you might enjoy the film more if you watch the pre-credits action sequence at home (Sony dropped it online already… see above) and then waltz into the theater at around the 25-minute mark when Kraven jumps back to the present tense.

Yes, there are a few enjoyable action sequences, mostly when Aaron Taylor Johnson’s charming, thirst-quenching, yet murderous vigilante makes like The Arrow and killing animal poachers and other “You have failed this planet!” baddies on his naughty list. There are a few moments of self-aware humor and earned laughs, while Alessandro Nivola’s Rhino (not a spoiler) has as much fun here as Matt Smith had in Morbius. However, Kraven is not a good movie; it pales compared to the many films from which it cribs. It lacks Denzel being Denzel, Andrew Koji’s way-better-than-it-should-be Snake Eyes turn (or that film’s surprising visual polish), as well as the overall weirdness present in both Tom Hardy’s Venom films and Dakota Johnson’s gleefully absurd Madame Web (which might be, god help us, my favorite Marvel/DC movie of 2024 by default).

Why The Lord of the Rings: the War of the Rohirrim is bad…

The War of the Rohirrim (free tip - if you want to appeal to general audiences, don’t make your title something that most folks don’t know how to pronounce) starts pretty well. We get a first reel emphasizing royal politics and the usual “your daughter should marry my son so we can unite” shtick. As expected, it backfires, leaving one royal family very pissed and ready to attempt the whole at least conquer and pillage routine. Yes, the animation was closer to direct-to-DVD than expected, but I’ve never considered visuals, even in a toon, as a zero-sum pass/fail variable. But once the spurned son goes full incel, the rest of the picture becomes a monotonous and generic storm the castle flick. Even the person-to-person showdowns that should quicken the pulse fail to offer much regarding action theatrics or emotional melodrama.

And no, I don’t know about or care about the Tolkien-specific lore related to this specific time in Middle Earth history, and frankly, I shouldn’t have to. As I (and others) have noted many times before, the likes of The Lord of the Rings or the Marvel Cinematic Universe became top-tier global franchises specifically by appealing both to hardcore fans of the source material and to those with a casual at-best awareness of that material. The Fellowship of the Ring remains one of my all-time favorite films, working as a sweeping and heartbreaking adventure fantasy/tragic melodrama, even while I spent most of that movie thinking that Aragorn and Strider were two different characters. Sans impressive animation, inventive action or compelling narratives, War of the Rohirrim is an inferior offering that uses its IP as the sole reason for consumer interest.

Trading your fans for $50 and a pack of beer…

That’s the link between the “Spider-Man villain origin story” and this Lord of the Rings prequel. Well, they are also both so afraid of being tagged as “problematic” that they don’t indulge in even a token amount of “bad romance” melodrama (be it Kraven and Oscar winner Ariana DeBose’s Calypso or fiery redhead Héra and Kylo Ren-ish bad boy Wulf), to their mutual detriment. The Return of the King or even the unapologetically queer Venom: Let There Be Carnage were successes either in spite of their IP or because they used the safety of the IP to craft something that had general audience appeal as well. Kraven and The War of the Rohirrim are almost willful mediocrities that expect audiences to overlook or forgive their inferiority because they are aligned with a specific franchise. They are playing the fans for fools.

If I’ve been cranky for much of the past year regarding Disney’s theatrical output, that’s why. Almost overnight (Encanto and Shang-Chi were just three years ago), they went from a studio that succeeded because their brand-specific output was a cut above to a studio that succeeded because… once upon a time, their brand-specific films were a cut above. Disney isn’t the only sinner, although I hold them to a higher standard because of how they so dominate the theatrical ecosystem and how they positioned themselves as “the room where it happens” to achieve that cultural domination. Sony’s Kraven is about as bad as you’d expect, while Warner Bros. Discovery’s War of the Rohirrum is worse than I expected. Both serve no purpose other than taking advantage of franchise completists while helping the respective studio hold onto those IP rights.