This post contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Homecoming.
Spider-Man: Homecoming (our review here) has already passed the quarter-billion dollar mark in worldwide box office after a massively successful opening weekend. Part of this success is likely due to Micheal Keaton’s performance as Adrian Toomes / The Vulture, a more developed and believable villain that most Marvel movies. (He does have a lot of practice playing characters named after winged animals.)
Toomes also showed himself to be more than the typical one-note villain in a post-credits scene. Earlier in the film, Spider-Man saved Toomes’ life and left him to be jailed, but alive. In one of the post-credits scenes, Toomes is approached by a fellow inmate, Mac Gargan / The Scorpion (played by Michael Mando), who is trying to find out Spider-Man’s real name so his friends “on the outside” can get revenge. Toomes knows who Spider-Man is, but doesn’t reveal Parker’s name.
Did Toomes protect Peter Parker for admirable reasons, or does he just want to get revenge up close and personal? Director Jon Watts answered that question when he spoke to Entertainment Weekly:
“That’s what is cool — he gets a moment of redemption and he gets to protect Peter, even though Peter would never know. […] It’s his way of saying thank you. […] You couldn’t just rely on the tropes of the villain being a murderer and killing a bunch of people. He had to be redeemable in some capacity in the end and that he believes everything he said, especially about his family.”
This would explain why Keaton said Vulture “is and isn’t” really a villain. Well, whether he’s a villain or a former villain is a question we may get an answer to. Watts says, “Toomes definitely could come back.” Let’s get nuts.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)