Kraven the Hunter is a terrible movie, but a fantastic character (if used correctly)

Kraven the Hunter looks mopey after seeing the box office returns from his film.

When I was in my 20s, trust me this is going somewhere just sit tight, I wasn't great at cooking (despite me thinking I was) and I liked curry. In fact, my "spice rack" was, essentially, salt, paprika, curry, done. I put curry on everything. I liked it and I thought it should just be on everything.

It wasn't until years later that I finally realized that curry is not supposed to be load bearing in a recipe. It works in conjunction with other spices. You need turmeric, mustard, garlic, coriander, and you KNOW you need fenugreek. But curry, by itself, shouldn't be carrying a recipe.

If you haven't put it together yet, Kraven is curry. Welcome to analogies for beginners.

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Now, here's the thing. A lot of people saw this movie's trailers and thought "Why Kraven?" Kraven is actually a really cool character when done correctly. For example, in Sony's Spider-Man 2 video game they turned him into a villain so intimidating it felt like it made sense that he could just lay out Spider-Man and Venom like they were nothing.

Kraven, when done correctly (ironically, in this case by Sony), can be absolutely terrifying. He is what happens if you take the intelligence of Reed Richards, Moon Girl, or Tony Stark and make them laser focused on one thing, often one target. He's terrifying because he has thought out how to kill you and he's taking his time, always somewhere working towards it, coming closer, like a garishly clad reaper.

One of my favorite storylines from the comics comes from 2019's Amazing Spider-Man issue 16 in a story called "The Hunted".

In it, Kraven the Hunter, alone with his clone son, team up with Arcade and use Taskmaster and Black Ant to go around the world and hunt down every character in the Marvel universe that has taken on the name of an animal and place them all in an impenetrable dome in the middle of New York.

We're talking not only Spider-man and Black Cat, but Spider-man villains like Vulture, Rhino, Lizard, the Owl. We got lesser known characters like Mandrill and Armadillo. We got newer characters like White Rabbit. It is a LOT of characters under this dome.

And into this dome Kraven releases incredibly powerful robots that are being remote controlled virtually by rich people looking to hunt the most dangerous game.

All of it leads to a really amazing twist and conclusion which you can read here if you wanna check it out (though it's also totally worth owning as it's a great reread).

But that's how Kraven works, he's a deeply fascinating character but he NEEDS the other characters, other than just that awful version of the Rhino that the Kraven movie introduced.

Imagine Tom Holland's Spider-Man, naive and full of positivity, breaking down and becoming paranoid as his every move is planned out by a man who just sees his death as one of many in a long line of kills.

It's baffling that Sony keeps trying to do their Spider-Man universe movies without actually having Spider-Man. Especially after Morbius did not do so well for them. And if you get a chance, look into their cancelled project called Silver and Black. It's the Silver Sable, Black Cat team-up you never wanted because neither character really works well without Spider-Man for a contrast.

And I know they...kinda...got a win with Venom but my god is that film for a very niche group of comic fans. The Venom films feel like the "Blue Collar Comedy Tour" of super-hero films. Just bottom of the barrel puns and an extreme need to show how they're "real" while at the same time portraying the least realistic humans I've ever seen.

This is why Sony's comicverse can't succeed. We've learned what makes comic films work and it's leaning heavily into the comic universe and, unfortunately for Sony, you can't lean into Spider-Man's New York without Spider-Man. Kraven deserved better.

Kraven needs to be in the MCU. Introduced after destroying the team up of Vulture and Scorpion (who the MCU seems to forget they introduced). He needs to go after Spider-Man, Ant Man, Black Panther, and any other animal based character that wants to show up. I want to see Kraven fight M'Baku, damnit. Give me the Kraven we deserve.