As Aaron Taylor-Johnson gears up for his debut as Kraven the Hunter, one of Spider-Man’s wonderfully absurd villains, later this year, it marks a return for the actor to a major franchise role — something he thought he was “done” with.
“Kraven the Hunter” is Sony’s next foray into their kind-of-MCU-but-not Spiderverse, introducing Taylor-Johnson as a violent antihero who cares very deeply about animals and conservations. Of course, Taylor-Johnson has already appeared in the MCU-proper, starring as Pietro Maximoff, Wanda’s brother, in “Avengers: Age of Ultron.
But, according to the actor in his new cover profile for Esquire, he “didn’t really care for” starring in huge franchises like the MCU and “Godzilla.”
“I mean, quite honestly, I thought I’d actually been done with these sorts of movies,” he said.
In fact, he apparently had plenty of opportunity to continue in that realm, and actively chose not to. Taylor-Johnson added that he was up for roles in movies “that nobody knows about—big, huge franchises that were in play.” But, along with not enjoying his time in them previously, Taylor-Johnson admitted that he just wasn’t at a place in his life where he could handle that spotlight.
“I would say I was probably not ready to be in that position anyway — it was too early,” he said. “But yeah, I also slightly didn’t give a f—.”
All that said, there was one reason behind all the others that he avoided franchise roles for years after “Ultron.”
“I wanted, purely, to be with my babies,” he noted. “I didn’t want to be taken away from them. I battled with what that would be like.”