By Jonathan Klotz
| Updated
2024 has been an incredible bounce-back year for Hollywood following the disaster that was 2023, with Disney releasing hit after hit, and Universal isn’t that far behind, but the success hasn’t been equal. That’s likely why both Sony and Warner Bros this week released eight minutes of their upcoming films on YouTube, in a daring new marketing move that is so desperate and attention-seeking that it just might work. After all, for both Kraven and Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, ticket pre-sales have looked so bad that, at this point, anything to try and get butts into seats is better than nothing.
Another Spider-Man Villain
Kraven the Hunter, starring Aaron-Taylor Johnson as the latest D-tier villain to receive a movie from Sony, has been delayed for years, thanks in part to re-shoots and the writer’s strike, but it’s finally coming on December 13. The greatest Kraven story is the one in which he kills himself, Kraven’s Last Hunt, which has left fans mystified as to how Sony can get an entire R-rated feature film out of the big game hunter. That’s why the release of the opening eight minutes makes perfect sense: it tells an entire mini-movie that introduces audiences to the classic villain.
In the first eight minutes, with no English words spoken, we see Kraven go into a prison, come across colorful inmates, meet the local crime boss, brutally murder him, and escape into a storm as it’s revealed this was an elaborate “hunt.” I was on the fence about the movie beforehand, and while I still have serious doubts about the end product, this looks more like Venom than Morbius, so if nothing else, it’ll be a fun, mindless superhero film. Besides, I need to see how they made Rhino, the villain that new heroes in the comics beat up to show how tough they are, into the film’s big bad.
The War Of The Rohirrim
Within 24 hours after Sony released the first eight minutes of Kraven, Warner Bros dropped a video featuring the first eight minutes of The Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim. It doesn’t work as well, not only because of the uneven animation but also because the story is hard to grasp from the start, with no explanation as to who’s at war, why there are orcs, and why Helm Hammerhand, the King, is behaving the way he is. There are answers, and fans of Tolkien already know the story of Helm Hammerhand, but as an attempt to get people to see a contractually obligated film, it fails miserably.
I love fantasy, and I love anime, so you’d think I’d be the target audience, but while Kraven made me want to see more, War of the Rohirrim makes me want to wait for when it debuts on Max. The poor story in the eight-minute trailer is one thing, but the atrocious lip-syncing and poor animation, especially after Arcane recently showed us all how gorgeous it can be, makes it look like a direct-to-DVD cash-in. In a way, it actually is, since to hold onto the Lord of the Rings license, the studio has to make a movie every few years, and this is what they choose to do.
It will be fascinating to see how the box office for each film works out following the bold release of eight minutes of footage. I predict Kraven will receive an uptick in interest and be carried by good word of mouth, while War of the Rohirrim will be lucky to pull in My Hero Academia: You’re Next numbers. If this experiment works, though, and even one of these films starts to make money, expect more studios to follow suit with extended trailer releases a week before release as a last-ditch effort to create interest.
