What If Kraven Had Won? The Parallel Worlds of Heroes and Villains

Kraven the Hunter is one of the most iconic villains in the comic The Amazing Spider-Man. Like many other ideas, the brilliant Stan Lee drew inspiration from various sources to create this unique character. The main and most obvious source was the short story The Most Dangerous Game, written in 1924 by Richard Connell. In it, a famous American hunter arrives on an island where another famous hunter, General Zaroff, a Russian aristocrat who fled the Bolshevik revolution, has grown tired of hunting animals and, seeking a greater challenge, now hunts humans. Kraven's origin is similar to that of General Zaroff. However, Kraven, tired of hunting the most savage and powerful animals, has now set his sights on Spider-Man, whom he sees as the ultimate prey. Defeated time and again by Spider-Man, Kraven becomes increasingly obsessed with the arachnid hero to the point of basing his entire life on defeating his archrival.

Kraven's Last Hunt is one of the best stories in the world of comics. The great writer J.M. DeMatheis had conceived the core of the story, that of a hero buried alive, to use it with Wonder Woman and Batman. When he did not obtain authorization from his editors due to the boldness of the story, DeMatheis took it to Marvel, where it was approved for the Spider-Man universe in 1987. In this story, Kraven has decided to undertake one last hunt, the great battle to prove who is the strongest rival. Kraven chases Spider-Man, shoots him with tranquilizer darts, buries him two meters underground, and then uses Spider-Man's disguise to embark on a deadly hunt to execute criminals in New York.

Although a couple of weeks later, Spider-Man manages to escape his grave and find Kraven, the latter is already convinced he has won the game and ends the hunt by shooting himself and ending his own life. Kraven's sub-universe is one of the most interesting within the Spider-Man universe. Kraven's aristocratic past, his half-brother, the villain known as the Chameleon, a super-spy master of disguise and acting capable of perfectly impersonating anyone, an obvious nod to the Cold War. Calypso, Kraven's lover, a powerful Haitian voodoo priestess, who provides Kraven with all kinds of herbal potions to become stronger or weaken his rivals.

It is a fact that the recently released Kraven movie will barely scratch the surface of Kraven's vast sub-universe. Surely, complex stories like Kraven's Last Hunt would hardly be intelligently adapted to the big screen. Instead, film studios have decided to turn Kraven into something he is not, an anti-hero. A concept that seems to have recently gained fame, even inspiring singers like Taylor Swift. Unfortunately, Kraven was built as a villain, and a very particular one. Attempting to reconstruct him, as happened with the Joker in the second film starring Joaquin Phoenix, is almost a guarantee of failure.

First Blood is a novel written by David Morrell in 1972. It tells the story of Rambo, a "Green Beret" veteran of the Vietnam War who, unable to adapt to a new life beyond the war, wanders around the U.S. Rambo arrives in a small town where he is rejected by the local sheriff, who, faced with Rambo's persistence in entering the town, starts a human hunt that will have bloody consequences. First Blood was brought to the big screen in 1982 by director Ted Kotcheff, who cast the famous actor Sylvester Stallone as the lead character, now named John Rambo. Stallone's only request was to allow him to rewrite part of the story. Years earlier, Stallone had written the highly successful film Rocky, so Kotcheff had no objections.

Quentin Tarantino often expressed his admiration for Stallone and his films. Tarantino invited Stallone to participate in two of his movies, Jackie Brown and Death Proof. On both occasions, Stallone turned down the roles because the stories included violent murders of minors and drug abuse, which created a moral conflict with Stallone's values, which did not allow him to be a "bad motherfucker," but rather a killing machine. To Tarantino, Stallone's adherence to his moral values in Rambo had completely distorted the film. Stallone rewrote the ending of Rambo. In the novel, Rambo dies at the end. Stallone decided that the character had already suffered enough and deserved to live. Tarantino then thought they might make a new version of Rambo, where at the end, the Vietnam War veteran, like many others in real life, goes insane and commits suicide after, like Kraven, fighting his last hunt. An idea that not only did not appeal to Stallone but made him think the director of Pulp Fiction was an insane bastard. In the end, DeMatheis managed to write that controversial and complex story in a medium that many believed was for children. One that Stallone, ironically, did not want to tackle.

Kraven ended up taking his own life, while Stallone considered that Rambo should not do so because he was a hero. The Rambo movie became a phenomenon, and the character a national hero. The Kraven movie is set to be a failure by trying to turn him into an anti-hero. Kurt Cobain, the former leader of Nirvana, was not a hero; he was more of an anti-hero. Cobain took his own life. He died young, like many other vocalists of the grunge movement. Chris Cornell, former vocalist of Soundgarden, one of my favorite bands, also died young. In his second stage, with short hair, Cornell reminded me of a young Kraven, with muscles and facial hair. Cornell had cut his hair as he considered it a cliché in the rock world. Cornell took his own life, not like Kraven, but ultimately the result was the same.

Recently, I engaged in a hypothetical exercise, in the style of Marvel's What If? comics. What if Richie Kotzen of The Winery Dogs had been the leader of Soundgarden? What if Taylor Momsen of The Pretty Reckless had been the leader of Soundgarden? What if Kyle Thomas of Exhorder and Floodgate had been the leader of Soundgarden? What if John Corabi of Mötley Crüe had been the leader of Soundgarden? Cornell's voice reminded me of Paul Rodgers from Free, Sammy Hagar from Montrose, and David Coverdale from Whitesnake. Cornell himself dared with his own What If in the form of the album Scream, produced by Timbaland, where Cornell imagined himself in a parallel world where he was Justin Timberlake. The idea was never to find a replacement, just to think about the possibilities of a parallel world where Kraven really won, where Rambo really took his own life, where Stallone was Vincent Vega or the Jew Bear. A universe where Cornell was the leader of Guns N' Roses and still alive, and maybe Axl Rose was the leader of Soundgarden.