Kraven the Hunter is the last in the strange lineage of Sony’s Spider-Man Universe. It was a project of spin-offs surrounding the villains of Spider-Man who don’t appear in any of his Marvel Cinematic Universe ventures. The universe started off strong with Venom. While not a critical hit, Venom endeared itself to audiences, buying goodwill that allowed Sony to have a whole string of flops in its wake.
It got to the point that the week Kraven the Hunter was released, it was announced that Sony’s Spider-Man Universe would be placed on hold. That’s not entirely fair. While never rising to the competition at Marvel Studios or DC/Warner Bros., Sony’s Spider-Man Universe was an interesting little pocket of comic book cinema worth looking back on now that it’s over. So, without further ado, here’s Sony’s Spider-Man Universe ranked worst to best.
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6. Venom: The Last Dance (2024)
The worst thing a movie can be is boring. Venom: The Last Dance is excruciatingly boring. Losing a lot of the freewheeling energy of the previous two films, writer-director Kelly Marcel, who worked on both of those films, still adequately zeroes in on the winning element of the franchise in Tom Hardy‘s performance as Eddie Brock/Venom. Tom Hardy has never committed less than 100% of himself to a role.
His bumbling leads to several fun bits, such as constantly losing his shoes. Unfortunately, the story here is too weak to match Hardy’s energetic, erratic work. Plus, a major supporting player in the previous two films, Anne Weying (Michelle Williams), is completely missing, leaving an emotional core somewhat gutted.
Venom: The Last Dance could have overcome this missing element by introducing some fresh surprises. Instead, Kelly Marcel settles for having Eddie and Venom trudge through a generic, largely cloying road movie set-up. Few scenes in this film lack the mark of studio interference and clear post-production ADR, and shots that don’t match up abound. More than anything, Venom: The Last Dance feels joyless.
Attempts at jokes simply do not land. Its storyline vaguely gestures at the multiversal threat of Knull (Andy Serkis) without bringing us any of the whacked-out visuals that come with that concept. Essentially, Venom: The Last Dance feels as low effort as detractors of the first two films have claimed these films are. At least we got a nice send-off between Venom and Eddie out of it.
5. Madame Web (2024)
Many words can be spent on Madame Web. None of those would be “boring.” Quite the contrary, as director S.J. Clarkson’s feature directorial debut is a project so completely wrong on every level that it approaches camp. The plot is tenuous at best—paramedic Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson) has to stop clairvoyant businessman Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim) from killing three young women (Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O’Connor) who are destined to become superheroes in the future. And there’s something about Cassandra Webb’s mother researching spiders in the Amazon before she died.
There’s a perverse joy in watching Madame Web. It moves at a breakneck pace, doesn’t care at all about coherency in lore or filmmaking, and bizarrely decides to set the proceedings in the early 2000s. Maybe some of these choices would’ve flowed better if they hadn’t been chopped and stitched back together.
Sony’s Spider-Man Universe was at its peak of reshooting, retooling, or otherwise messing with their feature films at this point. Nevertheless, that’s kind of what makes Madame Web a blast. Listen, this is a garish piece of corporate art. But don’t things going down in flames burn bright? Madame Web is a flashpoint in popular culture of superheroes falling out of favor, and it’s a brilliantly broken one at that.
4. Morbius (2022)
Morbius’s greatest sin is its lack of ambition. Sure, the hallmarks of a shoddy superhero film are there. Leagues of subplots are dropped without a second thought. The connections to a “wider universe” are forced—remember when Michael Keaton’s Vulture showed up for some reason? Yet, if you can set aside the obvious notion that Morbius is an obvious attempt by Sony’s Spider-Man Universe to play with the big boys, so to speak, what we get is simply a middling superhero movie.
The often clowned-on Jared Leto does a fine job as Professor Michael Morbius, a scientist who, for contrived plot reasons, gets afflicted with a medically-induced form of vampirism. Director Daniel Espinosa dutifully follows a thinly written script by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless that hits the standard superhero beats. A fun villain (Matt Smith) keeps the momentum going in spite of Morbius‘s overwhelming sense of “been there, done that.” Sometimes, a little generic is okay, though. When all is said and done, Morbius won’t be remembered beyond the memes it inspired, but for what it is, it’s a decent piece of superhero formula that would’ve been right at home on FX in its heyday.
3. Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)
Venom: Let There Be Carnage attempts to hone in on the meme-ified elements of the first movie that made a surprise hit. It’s mostly successful. Director Andy Serkis and cinematographer Robert Richardson conjure up some wickedly great comic-style tableaus of the Venom and Carnage symbiotes going up against one another. Woody Harrelson gets to have some fun as the titular Carnage. Of course, Tom Hardy throws all of himself into the role of Eddie Brock/Venom, even playing into the queer readings of the character’s relationship.
The only real issue with Venom: Let There Be Carnage is that it’s a bit too slight for its own good. Serkis and writer Kelly Marcel speed through plotlines, making the film feel more like a series of sketches than an actual full feature. It’s a significantly smaller-scale affair that is more about having fun than building on what came before. By that metric, it does its job without providing a marked improvement. Sometimes, however, we have to take movies for what they are and not what we want them to be, and Venom: Let There Be Carnage is a fun detour that deserves its place in the middle of the pack.
2. Kraven the Hunter (2024)
Ignore the critical lashings. Kraven The Hunter does a lot more right than it does wrong. Aaron Taylor-Johnson delivers all the ferocity the title character requires. At the same time, the supporting cast behind him, particularly Russell Crowe, Alessandro Nivola, and Christopher Abbott, chews the scenery any moment they get. J.C. Chandor is possibly the most competent director of a Sony’s Spider-Man Universe movie, telling a full story of vengeance that is more coherent than the apparent death knell of a cinematic universe has any right to be.
The way Kraven the Hunter integrates the Spider-Man mythos is as demented and strange as it is strangely brilliant. There’s a genuine attempt at world-building here that would’ve been applauded if it had been a Marvel Cinematic Universe film. Importantly, Kraven the Hunter has confidence. Shaping a movie entirely out of a Spider-Man villain isn’t easy work, surely. At the eleventh hour of Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, they came so close to finding a reason to exist. This would’ve been the finest moment of Sony’s experiment if it wasn’t for the next film on the list.
1. Venom (2018)
They got it right the first time around. The inaugural entry into Sony’s Spider-Man Universe represents its title character as well as it could have by fully embracing the ridiculousness. Tom Hardy communicates the complete insanity of sharing your body with another being by leaning heavily into physical comedy. The way Eddie Brock reacts to the symbiote he’s now partnered with and how the partnership clashes with the outside world is a tremendous hook that director Ruben Fleischer can maintain.
Venom drops all pretense other than having fun. Two losers- one human and one alien- have to unite to stop a threat beyond themselves. Their adventure sees action set piece after comedic moment after an unintentionally hilarious monologue from the camp villain (Riz Ahmed). Venom knows exactly what it is and who it’s for and gave the bizarre idea of a Spider-Man-less Spider-Man universe more legs than it deserves. What else can be said? Long after Sony’s Spider-Man Universe is a distant memory, one phrase will remain: We Are Venom.
That’s Sony’s Spider-Man Universe ranked worst to best. Some films were better than expected, others worse than their reputation suggests. All in all, it was a fun look back at a cinematic experiment in the shared universe.
Kraven the Hunter is now in theaters.
