The Vulture is an Iron Man Villain in ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’

With a new trailer for Spider-Man: Homecoming arriving tomorrow, fans are already getting whipped up into a tizzy about the latest Marvel Studios film, the first solo outing for Spider-Man since he officially joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) in last year’s blockbuster Captain America: Civil War. So it’s exciting to finally receive some actual details about the film from the filmmakers, who spoke to USA Today about his new take on the classic Spider-Man villain, The Vulture, who makes his live-action motion picture debut this summer.

But although Jon Watts’ description of Adrian Toomes, a bird man played by Birdman actor Michael Keaton, is a perfectly valid take on the notorious bad guy, there is one element of the villain’s description that gives us pause. We already gave it away in the title of this article, but let’s take a look at the official quotes and get back to that.

“My whole approach for this movie is that we’ve seen the penthouse level of the (Marvel) universe, Jon Watts told USA Today“We’ve seen what it’s like to be a billionaire inventor and to be a Norse god. We’ve seen the very top of this world. But we’ve never seen what it’s like to be just a regular joe.”

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Arguably we HAVE seen what it’s like to be just a regular joe in the MCU, since that’s the entire point of the Netflix television shows, but let’s just assume the implication was “in the movies” and ignore that.

What really stands out to us is the description of Adrian Toomes as a man who runs a salvaging company that cleans up after superhero battles, who cobbles his weapons together using leftover pieces of alien technology. That’s a clever idea, and it reframes the whole “vulture” angle so that it completely makes sense.

But according to producer Eric Hauserman Carroll, the villain of Spider-Man: Homecoming isn’t even out to get Spider-Man. He “has a bone to pick” with Tony Stark instead, after Iron Man’s alter ego gets in the way of Toomes’ business. Carroll even says that The Vulture “sort of becomes the dark Tony Stark.” 

Marvel Studios

Again, that makes sense. But it doesn’t dispel the increasingly popular notion that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is just a long series of Tony Stark stories, in which many of the other popular characters are just supporting cast members. In addition to three Iron Man films, it’s been argued that Tony Stark – as played by Robert Downey Jr. – became the focus of both Avengers movies and also last year’s Captain America: Civil War.

Now appears that even Spider-Man: Homecoming is a two-hander, in which Tony Stark must once again be instrumental to the plot, to the extent that one of Spider-Man’s classic villains is now an Iron Man villain instead.

This sort of storytelling may come part-and-parcel with the MCU’s crossover concept, in which all of these heroes and villains co-exist and play off of one another, but it’s Spider-Man’s first movie in the MCU. Why not let him have his own villain?

We’ll have to wait and see whether this potential criticism actually affects the movie. Specifically, we’ll have to wait until we see Spider-Man: Homecoming on July 7, 2017.

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Top Photo: Marvel Studios

William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and Canceled Too Soon, and watch him on the weekly YouTube series What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.

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