Kraven the Hunter is the action-packed, 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.
As Kraven The Hunter releases in Australian cinemas on December 12, Nick L’Barrow spoke with the film’s director, JC Chandor, about how he used the R-rating to really tell Kraven’s story, and what his experience was like directing a movie that wasn’t based on one of his own original scripts.
Nick: JC, it’s a pleasure to meet you! How are you today?
JC Chandor: I’m good! How are you doing, half a world away?
Nick: I’m doing incredibly well! Thank you for taking the time to chat. I’d love to kick off with your process as a director of using Kraven’s physicality, and the violence, to tell his story. How do action scenes, especially ones that are R-rated like these, inform the narrative?
JC Chandor: Yeah, it’s a huge part. I’ve used action before, but never quite like this. But it’s the way I always try to describe it, is that the action scenes should, at their conclusion, give you a very clear view of what I’m trying to do as a director, for the character, right? What is the emotional honesty behind it? Because it’s a violent act. It’s about as emotional as it comes.
And so, when we were given the opportunity by the studio to tell this as an R-rated film, it wasn’t something we took on lightly. We sort of thought it through, but when you go back through the source material, Kraven’s journey is a villain’s journey. We’ve structured it as a classic origin story, but the journey leans towards villainy.
So, I think the R-rated violence, and the emotional violence, that takes place in the film, especially with people like Russell Crowe — one of your countrymen — and Levi Miller — who’s another one of your countrymen! – as a younger Sergei, who’s relationships in the early parts of the film really set up the foundation for, you know, the violence that comes later. And so, my job as a storyteller is to try and merge all of those things together.
Nick: As someone who is a fan of your storytelling, and has seen all of your films, I was curious to find out whether your approach as a director changes at all when, with something like Kraven, and for the first time, you’re working on a project that you haven’t written yourself, and is already in an established universe.
JC Chandor: Absolutely! You know, I think those stories, as I call them, I built from the ground up. They’re just from my brain, and they usually have some sort of basis somewhere else, but structurally, it’s just something that I kind of approach as the entire author of.
What’s fun in this instance, was the source materials, which wasn’t so much other films, but it was the comic books, we’re almost this kind of bible of canon to go back and dig into. I loved that challenge. In fact, it’s sort of why I veered off a little bit from the navel gazing, kind of singular storytelling, because I was finding my directorial muscles were getting a little atrophied. It sounds weird to say this, but by the time I had finished writing them, the story was almost done for me. It just became now about executing that, and getting the right actors, and locations, for the story.
You know, we just finished the last visual effects shot last night for this one. I felt like I was never done. I kind of was just continuing to, as a director, get to stretch new muscles. So, it was a great challenge and one that I hope people realise that we’re striving to do something a little more with this than maybe expected.
Thank you so much to JC for his time, and to Sony Pictures for organising the interview. Kraven the Hunter is in cinemas December 12.
