Sony Spider-Verse discussion thread

Absolutely wrong. There are many responsible hunters who are also conservationists. Just because they track and kill game animals doesn't mean they aren't concerned with the ecosystem's well-being or aren't interested in conservation. In fact at least in some parts of the US there's a need for hunters to control the population of deer, for example.

Do you think every person that's ever hunted throughout history didn't care about the wild?

Now, big game hunting or trophy hunting, like the kind Kraven is usually shown to be... yeah they're generally not conservationists or interested in conservation. It's a very... unique take and I don't know how it's supposed to work.

 

Theodore Roosevelt was famous as both a big game hunter and a conservationist. It is possible. After all, you can't keep hunting if all your prey animals die out.

Although I agree that an ethical and measured approach to hunting seems out of character for Sergei Kravinov, a guy who thinks it's okay to hunt and kill human beings purely for his own entertainment and pride. Although IIRC, we did get a more antiheroic, redeemable version of Kraven in the '90s animated series.

 

Hence "generally." But yes, Teddy Roosevelt is a great counter-example.

Agreed about Kraven still though. I haven't seen the 90s version in a long time, maybe will have to look there again. It wouldn't be the first time Sony drew inspiration from the 90s animated series (Into the Spider-verse).

 

Also Spider-Man 3, the way it treated the symbiont as corrupting Peter rather than just draining his energy as in the comics, plus the iconic shot of Peter waking up to see himself hanging upside-down and seeing the black costume in the mirrored windows.

I'm not sure about the Spider-Verse connection, though. While it's true that the '90s series's concluding "Spider Wars" arc was (probably) the first Spider-Man multiverse story, the movie was presumably based on the more recent "Spider-Verse" storyines in the comics, particularly their element of bringing together characters from pre-existing alternate-universe comics. Whether those were inspired by the animated series is unclear. If anything, I've heard the '90s series showrunner John Semper complain that nobody gives him credit for doing it first.

 

I've always assumed that that the comics were inspired by the animated series, yes.

 

Assumption should never be mistaken for fact. And it's never safe to assume that resemblance between two creative works is proof of direct inspiration. The majority of the time, it's just coincidence or convergence -- different creators working within the same pool of ideas and tropes will inevitably put them together in similar ways sometimes, without actually trying to.

It just seems to be a growing pop-culture trend in recent years for fictional franchises that have multiple distinct continuities through adaptation to tie them together through the multiverse trope. You've got a multiverse in The CW's DC Arrowverse, the upcoming multiverse in the DC film universe, the MCU entering the multiverse, etc. You've got Ghostbusters comics having the Ghostbusters of different continuities crossing over with each other. Over in Japan, all of the Ultraman series in the past decade have been set in different universes yet crossed over freely with their predecessors, and other tokusatsu franchises have done similar things. It's the result of people who grew up as fans of those multiple continuities becoming creators themselves and wanting to pay tribute to them all. It's just part of the wider cultural zeitgeist, not the result of any single inspiration.

 

I dug into it a little and Into the Spider-Verse was inspired by Dan Slott's Spider-Verse comics. Slott credits the video game Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions which he worked on with inspiring the comics. He says that they already had the idea when he was hired and a behind the scenes feature on the game says they were initially inspired by seeing a picture of Spider-Man 2099 when researching Spider-Man. This inspired them to create a game where you could be both Spider-Man and 2099 which then grew to include Noir and Ultimate as well. The team also worked with Mark Hoffmeier from Spider-Man: TAS to develop the story so there is a connection there though it wasn't the initial spark of inspiration.

 

Okay, thanks. I didn't think "Spider Wars" was the direct inspiration. While it was a multiverse story, it didn't have the element that links the other versions you mention, i.e. allowing characters from existing alternate continuities to meet. The closest it came to that was having one of the alternate Spideys be Ben Reilly, a nod to the comics' version of the Clone Saga. Well, that and crossing over with the "real world" where Spidey was a comic book character. (I'm still disappointed that they didn't get Nicholas Hammond to voice the actor Spidey from that universe.)

 

In the case of the Symbiote, the animated series reinvented it. As opposed to being an emotionless creature that was learning to be more sentient the longer it was bonded to Peter and then going mad when it joined with someone as unbalanced as Eddie Brock, the animated series had the idea of it always being a wholly sentient and malevolent creature that intentionally corrupted its hosts.

Rather than a Symbiote (where both sides feed one another), it became more of a parasite. A sentient, malevolent one.

 

But do they actually care about the actual health and wellbeing of the ecosystem, because they want to see it do well, or just because they want to have things to kill? I'll admit to having very strong feelings when it comes to the topic of hunting.

The only problem with this, is that most of the time the reason they even need to control the population of things like deer is because of the loss of predators who usually control the population, and one of the big reasons is hunting.

They sure as hell don't really care about the animals, that's for damn sure.

Yeah, that's the oddest thing about this.
I can somewhat understand someone who has to hunt for food or something like that, but trophy hunting absolutely disgusts and infuriates me. Especially shit like canned hunts...

 

@JD, I'm not a hunter, myself, but I've known enough people who do hunt to know that your views regarding hunting are grossly misguided.

 

Living in a hunting area, but not being a hunter myself, people here have a huge respect for the environment--and are able to fill their freezers with moose and elk. They don't waste the animals at all. The indigenous communities practice spiritual respect for the animals that sustain them, and the hides are cared for as well.

 

As far as I'm aware, Kraven is not typically shown as a 'hunt to eat' guy though. He's a trophy hunter.

 

I'm no fan of hunting myself, but I'm no fan of stereotyping either. There are a lot of different kinds of hunters. As I already said, there are some who are just bullies wanting to kill things, but there are others who see themselves as part of the natural cycle of life and death, who believe that if it's okay for a wolf or a lion or an eagle to kill animals for food, it's not wrong for a human to do so. The former kind couldn't care less about the ecosystem and just see it as something to exploit, but the latter kind often have a lot of respect for the animals they hunt, and part of what they enjoy about hunting is being out in the natural world and experiencing its beauty.

I had a friend in high school and college whom I considered a very kind, giving, and ethical person, and I was shocked and hurt when she told me she enjoyed hunting rabbits, since I loathed the idea of hunting. We had a long talk about it, and I came to have some understanding of her point of view, even though it wasn't something I'd choose to do myself. Few things in life are black-and-white.

I don't think Kraven would be interested in a canned hunt (I had to look that up). What he prides himself on is surmounting a difficult challenge, taking down a formidable foe with the power to fight back. That's why he pitted himself against Spider-Man, a physically superior foe with high intelligence. So the last thing he'd want is a hunt that renders the prey helpless with no chance of escape.

 

Hunting for food and hunting for sport are not mutually exclusive things.

 

Apparently.

The wiping out of predators like wolves wasn't mostly due to overhunting by trophy or food hunters, but due to the danger they posed to livestock.

And in the meantime the deer population still needs to be controlled.

You mean the ones they kill and eat I assume? I mean what's the difference between hunting for food and buying ground beef at the supermarket? It's the natural cycle.

"Has to hunt" or "prefers hunting"?

And no serious, ethical hunter will have anything but scorn for canned hunting, which I'd never even heard of before.

 

Kraven isn't going to eat Spider-Man.

 

At the risk of sounding insensitive does it matter? If a hunter is a conservationist does their motivation change anything?

Most hunters do attempt to aim for a quick clean kill whenever possible. Unless you're a vegetarian your food is coming from somewhere. I don't see how a hunt is worse than a slaughterhouse.

 

Yes they are. This is what is known in writing circles as "motivation".
People that *need* to hunt for food don't care about trophies; they're too busy not starving to death. People that eat their trophies are still trophy hunters.
There is of course a third category; people that can easily feed themselves the same way everyone else does, but hunts for meat anyway because it's fun, with or without trophies. Those are what I like to call "arseholes".

And before anyone thinks to tell me I don't know what I'm talking about: I live in the country side. I've seen hunts up close. Hunters can go fuck a very long stick over a very high cliff.

 

I can see Kraven going after people who arrange and participate in "canned hunts".