Aaron Taylor-Johnson gets gym-jacked one more time, Russell Crowe auditions for a future Ernest Hemingway at his burliest bio-pic and Alessadro Nivolla trots out the silliest supervillain voice since John Malkovich in “Rounders” for “Kraven the Hunter,” a misguided mess of a comic book adaptation.

As long as “Jonah Hex” is streaming somewhere, the phrase “Worst comic book movie ever” is retired. But this lifeless, perfunctory piffle, with some admittedly grand stuntwork and a whole lot of digital characters and critters, earns a piece of that label.

Worst. Origin story. Ever.

It’s about how an American-educated teen (Levi Miller), son of a shady, predatory Russian oligarch (Crowe, slingink a Stolichnaya vodka-ad accent, comrades) pays the price for daddy’s big game hunting obsession and ethos.

“Man ees ze only animal who should be dreaded!”

Learning “the joys of stalking” with the old man as they hunt a man-killing lion in Ghana, young Sergei is chewed up, and how, by the lion as he tries to protect his weak and meek brother Dmitri (Billy Barratt).

A tourist teen named Calypso (Diaana Babnicova) visiting her Ghanese conjure-woman relative intervenes with a Tarot (ish) card and a little magic potion to save the lad.

Sergei lives, and as he grows up to be a killer of killers, and poachers, he will be Kraven and Calypso will be a London lawyer fighting evil-doers through the courts and Dimi (Fred Hechinger) will be the same sniveling baby brother he always was, because he stayed behind with their cruel dad while Sergei Kravinoff went off the grid on family lands in Siberia, traveling hither and yon to foil foul play in progress.

We don’t see this “travel,” just a momentary hint of it. It’s one of the ways this J.C. Chandor (“All is Lost,” “Triple Frontier”) film seems downright half-assed. We don’t see anybody go from Turkey to Iceland to Wales or wherever else they filmed this. This makes the picture feel static.

Yes, once Johnson shows up the stunts turn spectacular and digitally-assisted as he heedlessly leaps, plunges and thrashes his way in a fresh effort to rescue his now-kidnapped brother. But the kid’s always been “good” at mocking Dad’s menacing voice. How do they manage that? They just dub Crowe’s growl into Hechinger’s mouth.

DeBose is not quite a bystander to the “plot,” such as it is, which involves a spurned partnership suitor (Nivola) who turns into an arch enemy and surgically-chemically enhanced monster, “Rhino” whose minions must be foiled and whose infallibility must be matched against the seemingly-indestructable Kraven.

Kraven tracks his quarry down. We don’t see this. We just hear variations of this exchange.

“How’d you find me?”

“I’m a hunter.”

As if that’s enough. Well, he sniffs occasionally. Great nose for…perfume.

There’s little in the way of humor, although threatening Kraven with a taser is lame enough to be insulting.

“Not enough volts!“

But the sniggering shades-of-Malkovich-in-“Rounders”voice veteran character player Nivola comes up with has to be my favorite light touch.

None of the above adds up to anything like a satisfying night out at the movies, with the “story” kind of jumping along between sequences that don’t really connect and the violence going so far as to have Kraven yank out a guy’s heart to throw and knock another bad guy down with.

“Kraven the Hunter’s” the empty hole where a real movie’s beating heart should have been.

Rating: R, bloody violence, profanity

Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola, Christopher Abbott and Russell Crowe

Credits: Directed by J.C. Chandor, scripted by Richard Wenk, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, based on the Marvel comics. A Columbia Pictures release, in association with Marvel Entertainment.

Running time: 2:07