Here's How Marvel Chose Vulture As Spider-Man: Homecoming's Villain

Marvel decided to go a different route with the newest Spider-Man outing, choosing Adrian Toomes (aka Vulture), a villain never depicted in live-action before, to face off against Peter instead of the Harry Osborns of the past. According to producer Eric Caroll, the choice to go with Vulture came from the character finally being able to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where Toomes is pretty firmly entrenched.

"When we sort of struck on the fun thematic thing of the Vulture being somebody who scavenges what the Avengers and their enemies leave behind, we all just got excited about that," Caroll told Collider on the Homecoming set. In the comics, Toomes makes his money by finding technology left behind after big superhero battles, a livelihood which is seriously threatened by Tony Stark's Damage Control. Since Robert Downey Jr. will play a pretty big role in Homecoming, this storyline is likely to come into the film as well, which confirms that Homecoming was the right time to include Vulture, considering how tied in his storyline is with the Avengers.

However, Caroll says that it wasn't automatically Vulture: they were willing to hear pitches for other Spider-Man villains, even ones who had appeared in previous films. "If someone came in with the greatest Doc Ock pitch of all time and we're like, 'This is it. It feels new, it feels different, it feels MCU specific,' we would have done it," he said. However, he noted that "all but two" people came in with Vulture pitches, leading them to choose the tech-savvy villain. It was, of course, even more of a bonus when they were able to land former Batman Michael Keaton to take on the part, especially considering how impressive his performance seems to be from the small amount of footage we've seen in the trailers thus far.

Spider-Man: Homecoming will hit theaters on July 7. Keaton's Vulture is one of the many reasons why we believe the movie will actually be better than you think.