Aaron Taylor-Johnson's Kraven The Hunter Movie Is Rated R For Two Reasons

The cinematic universe formerly known as SPUMC is coming back to our screens with a double dose of Spider-Man-less movies about villains that are maybe more like heroes. First we'll get "Venom: The Last Dance," which is a terrific title for the last chapter in the love story of Tom Hardy's Eddie Brock and the creature Venom, and then audiences might delight in our first ever live-action Kraven the Hunter in the aptly title "Kraven the Hunter" movie, which just got an exciting and violent new trailer.

The film stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson as big-game hunter Sergei Nikolaevich Kravinoff, who is probably not going to be referred to by his full name more than twice in the entire movie. Also starring is Sergei's gangster dad played by Russell Crowe, and right there, that's already enough reason to watch this movie. Sergei also has a estranged half-brother named Dmitri (Fred Hechinger), while Ariana DeBose plays his love interest, the voodoo priestess Calypso. Rounding out the cast are Alessandro Nivola as Aleksei Sytsevich, aka Rhino, and Christopher Abbott as the assassin Foreigner.

Aside from a quick look at the new attempt at a live-action Rhino, the trailer is significant for one very refreshing thing — its R rating. The trailer is big on gratuitous, brutal, and graphic violence. This is meant to be the very first R-rated superhero movie produced by the Sony and Marvel partnership, and the reasons for that rating are pretty clear from the written description at the very end of the trailer: "Strong bloody violence, and language."

It is interesting that "Kraven the Hunter" is the movie Sony finally decided to go after an R rating with. Both "Venom" movies as well as "Morbius" were long theorized and reported to have R-ratings because of the violent nature of their protagonists — after all, one is a brain-eating alien parasite, and the other an actual vampire. Yet all three movies ended up with a PG-13 rating that allowed the movies to appeal to families — even if "Venom: Let There Be Carnage" pushed that rating to its limits.

Granted, it makes sense that the studio would eventually cave and give the Sony's Spider-Man Universe an R-rated movie. After all, we just saw Marvel Studios have its first R-rated movie, "Deadpool & Wolverine," become a huge billion-dollar hit, so why wouldn't Sony try the same? What is interesting to note is that, of the four live-action comic book superhero movies releasing in 2024, all but one of them are rated R — the one exception is "Venom: The Last Dance," despite the very obvious R-rated-inclined sexual tension between Eddie and Venom. All others, "Deadpool & Wolverine," "Kraven the Hunter" and the upcoming "Joker: Folie à Deux," are rated R.

"Kraven the Hunter" attacks theaters on December 13, 2024. Its synopsis reads as follows:

Kraven the Hunter is the visceral story about how and why one of Marvel's most iconic villains came to be. Set before his notorious vendetta with Spider-Man, Aaron Taylor-Johnson stars as the titular character in the R-rated film.