Kraven's Movie Origin Takes Inspiration From A C-List Marvel Superhero

With "Kraven the Hunter," Sony is gearing up to give Marvel fans another Spider-Man movie without Spider-Man. Starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the titular hunter — a man whose connection to animals allows him to track and hunt people with ruthless precision — Kraven is one of the most iconic foes of the webslinger. 

Unless the trailer for "Kraven the Hunter" is pulling some sneaky misdirection, it seems that Sony has changed some core elements of the character in the process of translating him from page to screen. Most notably, his origin seems to have been copied from a different Marvel character — the Whizzer.

Kraven has gone through several iterations over his many decades in Marvel Comics. His initial persona as Sergei Kravinoff, a Russian oligarch with an obsession for big game hunting, was rebooted in the "Ultimate Spider-Man" comics, reimagining the Hunter as a Steve Irwin-esque television personality who hopes to boost his dwindling ratings by capturing Spider-Man live on air. Now, for Sony's take on the character, they appear to have kept the original version slightly intact, but they have fundamentally altered his origin story, which now seems to have been cribbed from the Whizzer.

In the trailer for "Kraven the Hunter," Sergei's powers are triggered when he's mauled by a lion while on a hunting trip with his father, and Kraven absorbs the lion's blood. That seems remarkably similar to Whizzer's origin story. Notably, Whizzer's powers were granted to him after he was bitten by a cobra while on a safari excursion.

The Whizzer is a minor Marvel character who was introduced on the pages of "U.S.A. Comics" Issue #1 in 1941 and has appeared only a handful of times in the eight decades since. Born Robert L. Frank, Whizzer was the son of a famous scientist. While on a research expedition with his father, Robert was bitten by a cobra. 

His father then injected mongoose blood into Robert's veins, triggering latent mutations that gave Robert the power of super-speed and an adaptable physiology. Robert would proceed to dress up in a bright yellow suit and call himself Whizzer.

It's unlikely Whizzer will ever show up in a live-action movie, so it makes sense to tweak his origin story a bit and give it to Kraven. The original origin story for Kraven is that he gains his powers by drinking a secret serum, which might have weighed down the film adaptation in a similar way to how "Morbius" burdened its titular vampire (Jared Leto) with him needing constant blood infusions. The change is also a good excuse to revisit the relatively unknown history of Whizzer, proving that comics are weirder than film adaptations could ever hope to be.