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.
The 15 Best Supervillains Who Haven’t Been in a Movie Yet:
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.
The Best Supervillains Who Haven't Been In A Movie Yet
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Annihilus
This old Fantastic Four villain reinvented himself in 2006 when he damn near conquered the universe, and inadvertently brought the all-new, all-different Guardians of the Galaxy (a.k.a. the version everyone currently knows and loves) together in the first place. He's big, he's powerful, he looks scary as hell, he totally deserves a badass name like "Annihilus."
Photo: Marvel
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Anti Monitor
The all-powerful Anti-Monitor (whose name only makes sense with a LOT of context) destroyed an almost infinite number of universes, forcing the entire DC comic book line to reboot itself in the 1980s. Bad guys don't get much badder than this.
Photo: DC
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Bizarro
In some stories Bizarro is a failed clone of Superman, in others he's from a "bizarro" planet in which everything is the opposite of Earth. Either way, he's just as powerful as the Man of Steel and dangerously deranged, making him one of Superman's most popular villains for many years.
Photo: DC
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Brainiac
Another one of Superman's most popular bad guys, Brainiac is an alien android (in some versions, just an alien) obsessed with collecting intelligence from the around the universe. Some storylines claim he is directly responsible for the destruction of Krypton, others depict him as a destructive force that eliminates whole planets after he's learned everything about them.
Photo: DC
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Cassandra Nova
Cassandra Nova is Charles Xavier's twin sister (sort of), who escaped from the womb and became the mirror image of everything he stood for. Professor X tried to bring about a new age of peace between mankind and mutants. Cassandra Nova was responsible for a genocide that left 16 million mutants dead.
Photo: Marvel
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Clayface
There aren't many popular Batman villains who haven't shown up in theaters yet, but Clayface is easily the most prominent. An actor who fell victim to a toxic substance that melted him into clay, but gave him the ability to shapeshift into different people and deadly objects, Clayface is one of Caped Crusader's most powerful foes.
Photo: DC
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Kang the Conqueror
Kang the Conqueror is a little bit complicated, but time travel will do that to you. Basically he's a descendant of Reed Richards from the future, who became a time-hopping despot, who also became a more wizened villain named Immortus later in life, but thanks to time travel they sometimes work together. He's an ambitious villain, but the possibilities are inherently endless.
Photo: Marvel
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Kraven the Hunter
A lot of Spider-Man villains have animal powers (so does Spider-Man, obviously), so a big game hunter was always a natural fit. Kraven the Hunter may seem like a gimmick villain but his obsessive need to prove his superiority to Spider-Man eventually led to one of the hero's best and darkest storylines, Kraven's Last Hunt.
Photo: Marvel
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Metallo
Warner Bros.' obsession with Lex Luthor and General Zod has left a lot of Superman's best villains on the cutting room floor. Here's another one: Metallo, a criminal trapped inside a powerful metal body, whose ability to rebuild himself - and his kryptonite battery core - has made him one of the Man of Steel's most formidable foes.
Photo: DC
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M.O.D.O.K.
He's a big head with little arms and legs, and he's "Designed Only for Killing." This is M.O.D.O.K., one of Captain America's strangest and most unforgettable villains, who uses his mental powers to lead an army of evil super scientists.
Photo: Marvel
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Mr. Mxyzptlk
This hard-to-pronounce villain (here goes: 'Mix-YEZ-pit-lick") is an all-powerful prankster deity from Dimension X, who routinely pops into Superman's life to stir up mischief. But Mr. Mxyzptlk is more than a joke character, he's been the cause of major strife in the DC universe on multiple occasions and, in a classic story by Alan Moore, revealed himself to be one of Superman's most dangerous adversaries.
Photo: DC
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The Phalanx
One of the most fearsome alien races in all of comics, the Technarh are "techno-organic," alive but made of machinery, with the ability to transform themselves and infect other races. They formed The Phalanx and helped conquer the universe with Ultron as their leader, and proved themselves one of the most visually interesting and formidable threats in the Marvel universe.
Photo: Marvel
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Sinestro
Sinestro technically appeared in the live-action Green Lantern movie, but only as a hero, not as a villain. Once the most celebrated hero of the Green Lantern Corps, he eventually was revealed to be a corrupt influence, and went on to form his own army of Yellow Lanterns, who used their powers to instill fear across the galaxy.
Photo: DC
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The Skrulls
Another mighty alien race, The Skrulls are a species of shapeshifters who have repeatedly infiltrated the ranks of Marvel's heroes in an attempt to conquer our planet. In the epic crossover event Secret Invasion, they came shockingly close.
Photo: Marvel
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Thunderbolts
Nowadays the Thunderbolts are a group of supervillains employed by the government, not unlike the Suicide Squad. But when they first premiered they had one of the cleverest ideas in comic book history: they impersonated a new team of superheroes, and defeated their fair share of other supervillains, to earn the world's trust. Then, when the time was right, they revealed their secret identities and took over the planet! Lots of these villains deserve to be the bad guy in a superhero movie, but that's such a clever idea that the Thunderbolts probably deserve their own film.
Photo: Marvel
