“Fuck yes, it’s going to be rated R,” was how actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson introduced the first trailer for Kraven the Hunter back in April to CinemaCon audiences. Now that the trailer is out in the wild for general consumption, we’ve all seen how fiendishly hot Mr. Taylor-Johnson looks in the role — and it’s safe to say we’ve all got some variation of the f-word rolling around on our own tongues. Most likely the verb form, followed by a “me,” and then possibly a “daddy.” 

On her Instagram, filmmaker Sam Taylor-Johnson, referencing her partner’s laser-cut abdominal muscles on the film’s poster, put it more subtly: “Kravin’ my Hunter.”


Aww! That’s totally sweet. But it’s a decidedly PG declaration for a movie in which Aaron Taylor-Johnson wears a sleeveless strappy leather vest while straddling a man and biting his nose off, then spitting it straight into the camera.


Kraven brings sexual heat back to superhero movies.

In his Spider-Man spinoff, this Marvel villain calls for a more primal, guttural callback. Grunts, really. You know that scene in The Northman where all the hot Vikings are half-naked and screaming around a fire? This is like that, but it’s in your pants.

Movie superheroes, for all of their great big muscles on display, typically remain sexless trinkets. Even when Deadpool finds himself getting pegged, it’s with a wink — a goofy, “Ooh ain’t we naughty” meta-textual smirk. There's a sense of remove, like the sunrise mists that obscure Richard Madden’s side-butt in that single tasteful lovemaking moment in Chloe Zhao’s Eternals. The MCU will let its characters be lightly romantic adults, but only if they’ve been around for millennia, it seems. Even Kraven's brothers in Spidey-verse villainy, Venom and Morbius, haven't broken from this modest mold.


Those abs, all 18 of them, were carved straight from marble (with a gloss of photoshop sculpting). Biceps flexed, a fist pumped up to his face where we’re met with a scowl so aggressive it shakes us to our cores, and then further south of that. A mane of lion’s fur and a tooth necklace around his neck adds an air of man-beast flair. A million sexual awakenings are stirring, staring at this image. Superheroes haven't been this kinky since Michael Keaton and a catsuited Michelle Pfeiffer fought as foreplay in Batman Returns.


And the Kraven the Hunter trailer only leaps and bounds this horned-up aura even further, much like Kraven pouncing up the walls to attack his prey. An average MCU superhero movie usually promises us a single brief shirtless shot — months upon months of gym training only to have a pec or tricep immortalized for a split second. How these actors’ personal trainers must weep when they see the film’s final edit!