The Accents In The Kraven The Hunter Trailer Left Fans Scratching Their Heads

"Kraven the Hunter's" second trailer finally reveals Rhino (aka Aleksei Sytsevich, played by Alessandro Nivola), but it also raises some serious questions about the vocal stylings of some of the characters. The movie's main character might be Sergei "Kraven" Kravinoff (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), but the trailer's main voiceover comes courtesy of his father, Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe). "Embrace who you really are, son, and you will become a legend," Crowe's voiceover wraps up ... but some fans are having a hard time with his delivery. 

On X, previously known as Twitter, user @NandovMovies pointed out that this final sentence is particularly difficult to understand. "The last line of this trailer is borderline unintelligible. Just listen to it and see if it sounds like the word it apparently is," they wrote. "All I heard was 'and you then become a pretzel'," @dillongarland agreed. "It's clearly '...and you will become a wetsuit'," @SuperSteveDV chimed in. These fans aren't the first to call out Crowe's accent, though others have chosen to see the fun side in the actor's ongoing vocal choices. "The KRAVEN THE HUNTER trailer is fine, but the KRAVEN THE HUNTER trailer being the latest stop in Russel Crowe's worldwide, wacky accent tour totally rules," @OGScottieT wrote in the wake of the first trailer, alluding to Crowe's laundry list of accented roles. 

Crowe has indeed been known to play with accents in the past. He shot two versions of his "Thor: Love and Thunder" scenes to incorporate two versions of Zeus' accent, and the East Midlands English he used in "Robin Hood" features on Looper's list of worst on-screen accents of all time. Judging by fan response, it looks like his Russian-style "Kraven the Hunter" voice might also risk joining that list.

Amazingly enough, Crowe's pronunciation of words like "legend" isn't even the first time social media has had a field day with "Kraven the Hunter" accents. In the comics, Sergei Kravinoff is a Russian aristocrat, which reflects to the way he sounds in many adaptations. From the Kraven of "Spider-Man: The Animated Series" (Gregg Berger) to the ones on "The Spectacular Spider-Man" show (Eric Vesbit) and in the "Marvel's Spider-Man 2" video game (Jim Pirri), the character tends to have a distinctive accent. However, Aaron Taylor-Johnson's version doesn't have one, and fans weren't happy to find out that the live-action Kraven is missing this important thing. "[H]e's not even doing a big crap russian accent, that is Kraven's ENTIRE THING," wrote @chrismcfeely. 

Notably, Kraven is almost silent in the second trailer, and doesn't speak English at all. User @MarkhamCM suspected that the character's lack of lines is an attempt to hide the film's decision to skip the accent. "Kraken speaks ONCE in this entire trailer, and it's in a scene where he's speaking Russian. They want us to forget they gave Kraven The Hunter a British accent," they wrote.

While there's plenty of fan discussion about Nikolai and Sergei Kravinoff's accent game, it's good to remember that they're not the first subjects of such talk when it comes to superhero movies. What's more, accent controversies have utterly failed to ruin the success of the films in question. 

Tom Hardy based his Bane voice in "The Dark Knight Rises" on the Irish Traveller accent of boxer Bartley Gorman, but the end result was initially so difficult to understand that Christopher Nolan had to tinker with the sound mix before the premiere. More recently, Gambit's (Channing Tatum) wild Cajun accent in "Deadpool & Wolverine" almost immediately became a full-blown meme. 

Of course, both movies turned out to be runaway smash hits, with "The Dark Knight Rises" bringing in well over $1 billion and  "Deadpool & Wolverine" breaking the same box office benchmark shortly after its release. Could the fact that "Kraven the Hunter" has not just one but two accent controversies in its corner mean that the film is destined to do the same? That remains to be seen, but at least there's plenty of precedent that a superhero movie isn't necessarily doomed by its accent choices alone.