“It was the only way to tell the story of Kraven’s journey honestly.” – JC Chandor on why Kraven The Hunter is rated R

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The much anticipated Kraven The Hunter will end 2024 with a mind-boggling action fest, hitting cinemas in just under 2 weeks. The latest of Sony’s Superhero films will explore the origins of one of Spider-Man’s most feared foes in an R-rated action-packed entertainer.

Ahead of the film’s release, Director JC Chandor spoke about how the film becoming R-rated was a boon for him, allowing him to give justice to Kraven’s story. Here’s what he had to say

To tell Kraven’s story in a compelling, believable way, Chandor felt it important to make it visceral and raw. “One of the amazing opportunities about the film becoming an R-rated film was actually digging into Kraven’s origin,” he says. That was important, Chandor says, because it was the only way to tell the story of Kraven’s journey honestly. “You see this tragic moment when Sergei, this kid filled with testosterone and rage, kills these two guys as a teenager. He’s given a choice—he could have walked away from that incident, and probably never had anyone know that it had happened. But in that moment, there’s some element of bloodlust that he loves. There’s a justification for it: ‘These were bad guys, and I just took them off the planet, and that feels good.’ It’s that uncontrolled rage that is at the heart of this story, but you really would not have been able to walk anywhere near any of those topics in a PG-13 film.”

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.

Directed by ​J.C. Chandor​​​, the film also stars ​Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola, Christopher Abbott and Russell Crowe.

Sony Pictures Entertainment India releases ‘Kraven The Hunter’ on January 1st, in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. Only in cinemas.