Marvel Cinematic Universe

They got an albino actor to play Tobias Whale for Black Lightning, so I think they will probably go to the effort.

Edit: and it turns out that Whale's actor, Krondon, aka Marvin Jones III actually played Tombstone in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, so he's been both albino black super villains. Go figure.

Edited by HandsomeRob on Jul 12th 2020 at 10:23:13 AM

Hell, they could just have the same actor.

"I too really like the concept of Kraven as a “normal” man (albeit with a bit of Charles Atlas Superpower) who still manages to be a physical as well as psychological threat to Spidey thanks to tactics, weaponry and skills."

I can't help but think that people overestimate the skill.

Spider-man is able to dodge machine-gun shells at point-blank range and lift tanks, a Peak Human is not going to be able to beat him in psychical fight just for being a "better fighter".

For Kraven, I imagine that:

• Option 1: Kraven will always attack from a distance and avoid direct physical combat.
• Option 2: Kraven will invent a toxin that will reduce Peter's powers.
• Option 3: Kraven will have explicit superpowers.

Edited by JoLuRo075 on Jul 13th 2020 at 6:09:31 AM

Option 4: Kraven hits Spider-Man with an entire lion

Ultimate Spider-Man treated Kraven as a joke. He was a big game hunter that got rich and famous for killing animals with his bare hands for his tv show. Then he decided he'd hunt Spider-Man.

Peter knocked him out with one punch and derided him as a "show-biz phony". Then Kraven got arrested. Because he tried to murder someone in full view of the public on live television.

Kraven then got himself modified to be able to turn into a werewolf-like creature in an attempt to even the odds for a rematch with Spidey and boasted about it on television. Only for the Ultimates to arrest him again because genetic modification like that is illegal and he bragged about it on live television.

Edited by M84 on Jul 13th 2020 at 10:10:22 PM

Sure they would. In the words of Stan the Man himself:

Respective strengths only vitally matter in Shounen anime and Death Battle, and are definitely not going to be relevant enough control the plots of stories (rather than simply being the plot devices they actually are), especially when you're talking about Street Level heroes and their rogues galleries.

Hell, Civil War featured a guy with only mild superstrength beating Spidey - who is strong enough to lift a building - by fighting smarter. What matters first and foremost is whether you can make fight service the characters and story.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jul 13th 2020 at 7:15:37 AM

Damn, this is not a shonen does not mean that a character can physically beat someone much more powerful just for being more skilled.

Stop overestimating the skill.

A Peak human winning a physical fight against Peter is just bad writing.

Edited by JoLuRo075 on Jul 13th 2020 at 7:27:39 AM

No, it's writing. As in, the needs of the story determine the outcome of the fight, not the universe bible. Fans demand consistent power levels so they can win arguments with each other and bang their plastic toys together. Writers want to write stories, and if that story means some dude beats up Spidey, they don't want to have to deal with legions of aggrieved fans claiming that, "Nuh uh, Spidey's Strength rating is 13!"

Edited by Fighteer on Jul 13th 2020 at 10:29:20 AM

...that depends on how they do it.

If it's a pure straight fight, it might not make sense, but consider that Cap beat (a much less experienced I admit) Peter in Civil War by using his greater years of combat, and dropping the heaviest thing he could find on the kid and forcing him to hold it up.

Kraven is a hunter, and a good hunter prepares. So he chooses a good battle ground, maybe gives himself a weapon that can give him some kind of edge, and he finds ways to work around Pete's powers.

He probably still loses a large bulk of the time, but luck is also a factor in things. It's the job of the writer to make the victory believable.

It's not about power levels, it's about consistency.

Someone who can lift several tons and dodge bullets should have no problem fighting normal humans.

Under that logic, Black Widow should beat Thanos, just for being a better fighter.

Edited by JoLuRo075 on Jul 13th 2020 at 7:35:13 AM

This. It's not bad writitng. It's basic writing. It has been ever since way back when, some storyteller decided it would be a good idea to have a tiny dude beat a giant with a slingshot.

TBH, eschewing plot and character for fixation on a plot device is ultimately worse writing than the alternative. There's is absolutely no reason "X character has super strength, ergo no one without X strength" even approached a good idea for writing a character like Spidey.

Unless the plot establishes that Spidey is undefeatable, him being capable of defeat is not inconsistency. Him losing to characters smarter than him is not inconsistency. Him losing to characters more skilled than him is not inconsistency.

You're elevating the relevance of power levels, here. Like I said, they're basically a plot device - and even then, only in series that canonize them, which MCU Spider-Man definitely does not. Super strength is just an excuse to allow the character to lift things and punch things and what have you - its existence is not in any way an explicit statement that the charcter is thus immune to characters that don't do so.

Literally the only brand of media that I can think of that believes in playing respective strength levels with such pedantry - again - Shounen, and even then you find Shounen nowadays tends to edge away from doing so, because of how it results in escalation problems and difficulty using their cast.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jul 13th 2020 at 7:38:21 AM

Writers should strive for consistency, yes, but it should not be a straitjacket. You can justify any outcome you want. Maybe Peter caught the flu. Maybe he's pining for MJ. Maybe the dude got the drop on him. Creativity thrives when you are trying to achieve an outcome despite what "the rules" say should happen.

Edited by Fighteer on Jul 13th 2020 at 10:34:29 AM

Even then Kraven is pretty damn strong.

Once moonlighted as Spider-Man for a while & was quite the thorn in Kaine’s side who is essentially the anti-hero Spider-Man.

Plus he actually once gave Hell to Agent Venom.

I mean, hasn't it been revealed that Kraven kinda uses fancy herbs and shit to pump himself up a bit.

Not to Peter's levels, but maybe enough that his other skills can play a factor.

I only hope that Kraven in the mcu is explicitly superhuman and not a "Peak human" who is capable of giving Peter a physical fight.

Edited by JoLuRo075 on Jul 13th 2020 at 7:38:09 AM

We still haven't unlocked the side that can go superhuman just by doing push ups.

Edited by Blueace on Jul 13th 2020 at 10:42:19 AM

Kraven being basically slightly downgraded polarity reversed Black Panther is something that has been with the characters for literal decades, maybe since his inception (though I'd have to check). We've mentioned Kraven's Last Hunt (the definitive Kraven story) and that has as a plot point that the constant concoctions he uses to keep up with spider-man are taking a toll on his body and have reduced his lifespan (an aspect literally every adaptation of the character I can think of references), and there's a later extended sequence where Kraven consumes a bunch of herbs to juice himself up (and hallucinates some weird shit in the process). I don't know why Joluro keeps bringing this up every time Kraven come up.

Even if you disregard that wholesale, people overrate Spider-Man to Hell. If he were as fast and as strong as it's sometimes claimed half his rogues gallery wouldn't be able to even touch him, let alone keep up with him for prolonged fights. Doctor Octopus is a portly guy with metal arms and Vulture is an old man with wings, Spider-Man should treat them like child's play if the feats being bandied around here held true. In Spidey comics he's sometimes even troubled by random muggers with guns (the ol' "warns him just in time to get hit" spidey sense).

It's one of the reasons I find the "ah spidey was always holding back against Fisk and can curbstomp him whenever he wants" moronic. It implies that every other occasion Fisk had him in trouble Spidey was just being an idiot and deliberately putting people in jeopardy so he'll hold himself back. One thing is the Superman route (where the usual implication is he's holding himself back from turning his opponent in a pink mist and splitting a continent in half in the process with his sheer ungodly strength, but still otherwise putting all the effort he can), but the take where Spidey could fingerpoke Fisk and shatter his entire skeleton makes Parker a complete irresponsible moron throughout his entire career.

Edited by Gaon on Jul 13th 2020 at 8:12:18 AM

@Ultimate Kraven

One of the many times that the Ultimate Spider-Man book frustrated me.

I remember the version of Kraven from Spider-Man: The Animated Series and how that version became more of Anti-Hero after his debut episode. That version was really a villain because the serum he took drove him mad, and in later appearances he would help Spidey out.

I doubt they'd go with that interpretation should he appear in a film.

One of the video game adaptation of The Amazing Spider-Man (of all places) had a pretty fascinating idea: Kraven (being a absurdly good tracker) aids Spider-Man in finding the man who killed Uncle Ben, acting as a dark mentor of sorts. This idea goes nowhere because it's all a sham and Kraven is evil and yada yada, but the idea of Kraven aiding Spider-Man in some kind of "personal, emotional hunt" is one I love. The exact set-up of Uncle Ben's killer doesn't quite work here because Uncle Ben's killer hasn't even been mentioned, let alone established as being "on the run", but I'm sure they could find something suitable.

Kraven is superhuman thanks to his potions afair.

And yeah I too think such a massive strength gap being irrelevant due to supposed 'experience' (mainstream Spidey is an adult and has years of fighting experiencee, mind you, he's not that naive kid MCU Spidey is) to be stupid.

Experience only matters within the same ballpark.

And yes some level of consistency should be abided by, without going into DBZ territory. Spidey being much stronger than your average Joe streethero has been pretty consistent. It's just when he fights that he somehow forgets that, even taking the whole 'Holding back' angle into consideration.

Basically, it really comes down to what the story wants. And certain characters have that certain aura around them that makes other characters who are normally far more competent forget their powers, because the writers think "Hurr durr, Badass Normal is so much better than superpowers". Batman and Captain America come to mind for that category the most (and please PLEASE no more dicussion about peak humans, okay, I'm going by in-universe standarts here, I KNOW that what constitutes as 'Normal, unpowered' in their world is pretty superhuman for real life standards).

Edited by Forenperser on Jul 14th 2020 at 3:04:06 PM

Kraven's herb nonsense reminds me less of Black Panther and more of Bushmaster from Luke Cage.

That's a good comparison, especially due to the huge toll it takes on the body.

I said Black Panther because Bushmaster got his shtick from Kraven (probably). Kraven preceeds Bushmaster's herb business several decades (since to my reckoning that's a invention of the 2016 series. beforehand Bushmaster was either a cyborg or a experimented human like Cage himself).

So what are y'all thinking about the odds of Black Widow hitting the cinemas this year without another delay?