Russell Crowe Has Perfect Response to Being Father of Superman, Hercules, and Kraven the Hunter

Across the cinematic multiverse, actor Russell Crowe has spent the last decade or so amassing an army of impressive children. Whether it’s Kal-El of Krypton (Crowe was Jor-El in Man of Steel), Hercules (Zeus in Thor: Love and Thunder), or Kraven the Hunter (Crowe appeared in that film’s recent trailer), it seems like whatever world you’re on, you don’t mess with Russell Crowe’s family. Obviously this is all very silly, but social media had taken the ball and run with it, and eventually, it got back to Crowe, who had a dryly perfect reply to it.

Crowe quote-tweeted a meme that showed the three fathers and their sons mentioned above, in stills from their respective films. Crowe leapt on it.

“Fertile.Across time and space…,” Crowe joked on Twitter.

To be fair, though, Superman is an only child, and we haven’t seen any indication yet that Kraven’s half-brother Chameleon will make it to the big screen. So really, in absolute terms, it’s only Zeus who we know is especially fertile.

Joking aside, Crowe seems to have settle comfortably into the role of the (often flawed) father figure, not just in these films, but in a number of his recent roles. It’s a good look on him, and likely helps him stay busy, since it’s sometimes hard for actors over 50 to keep getting work in an increasingly blockbuster-driven Hollywood.

Ironically, Crowe will not appear in the upcoming sequel to Gladiator, in which the lead character is not his son, but a boy Maximus saved once, and with whom he had a somewhat paternal relationship.

Here’s the official logline for Kraven the Hunter, the next big comic book outing for Crowe:

“Kraven the Hunter is the visceral story about how and why one of Marvel’s most iconic villains came to be. Set before his notorious vendetta with Spider-Man, Aaron Taylor-Johnson stars as the titular character in the R-rated film.”

Kraven the Hunter is the fourth film in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, which exists separate from Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe, home to Tom Holland’s Spider-Man. Sony has weaved its own web of Spidey spin-offs that include Venom (2018), Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021), and Morbius (2022), with Madame Web and El Muerto on the way. 

Kraven the Hunter will be in theaters on October 6.