The story of one of Marvel’s most notable villains is coming to the big screen through Kraven the Hunter.

With Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Kraven, the film follows the complex dynamic between Kraven and his father, whose life is heavily involved in the streets. Kraven the Hunter isn’t your typical Marvel film (this project is under Sony’s Marvel Universe of films), and due to its graphic nature, the project is rated R.

“The movie has been like three years in development, building on this character and fine-tuning and dialing him in,” Taylor-Johnson told Blavity’s Shadow and Act in an interview ahead of the film’s release. “That collaboration has been with the director, J.C. Chandor, and our producer, Matt Tolmach, and creating this sort of standalone movie that can kind of have its R-rating and action to it,”

What is Kraven the Hunter about?

According to the official film synopsis, “Kraven the Hunter is the action-packed, R-rated, standalone story of how one of Marvel’s most iconic villains came to be. Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays Kraven, a man whose complex relationship with his ruthless gangster father, Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe), 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.”

“It’s hard to fit this character into a certain box, because it felt like it wasn’t going to do it justice, so we needed to bring that proper, bloodthirsty anger out in the action and make it that R-rating that it deserves for this character. At the core of it, it’s a gangster story [and] a family saga…two brothers in the presence of their power-hungry mobster father, and they don’t want to have any part of it. Kraven goes off and creates this world around him, and ends up becoming a bit of a vigilante and takes everybody down one by one, and ultimately, becomes far worse than his father. So, he has a moral code, and he just takes it way too far. It’s really interesting to see the dynamic of taking this innocent young boy to this man he becomes on this villainous journey.”

How filming in real environments enhanced the story

Taylor-Johnson appreciated the realism of the storytelling in Kraven the Hunter the most and says seeing this villain in the real world will help give it a more authentic feel for those watching.

“It was everything,” he told us. “I feel like, as an audience, we’ve had enough of the certain pop culture sort-of studio visual look. I think we’re like, ‘OK, great, but what do these characters look like when they’re out on the street?’ For us, it was like, ‘I want to see this guy in every element. I want to see this wild man, not only in the forest…I want to see him in an urban environment…I want to see him in the city.’ Like we have this mad chase throughout London, and it’s man against machine. He’s bare hands, bare feet, running across the pavement, smashing into like double-decker buses and stuff. So you get to sort of feel your favorite characters, and then throw them all over the place. I’m barefoot running through the snow in Ireland.”

Kraven the Hunter premieres is in theaters this Friday. Watch the interview below:

Aaron Taylor-Johnson

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