|
Adrian Toomes, also known as Vulture, is the main antagonist of the 2017 film Spider-Man: Homecoming, and a cameo character in Morbius.
He was the CEO of Bestman Salvage until he was driven out of business when Tony Stark and the U.S. Government founded the Department of Damage Control, so he used the remains of Chitauri and Ultron Sentinel technology to become a black market weapons dealer and obtained a vulture-themed flying suit.
He was portrayed by Michael Keaton.
Why He Rocks
- Michael Keaton does a great performance as Toomes with only adds to his sympathy to the reason below.
- He's shown to be a dangerous and menacing foe with a cool supervillain outfit, complete with mechanical wings that utilize jet propulsion turbine engines. He can also use the wings themselves offensively to slash or stab at enemies.
- Toomes easily piloted his Exo-Suit in order to help him with his black market business. Over the years of using the suit, he became a master at flying and maneuvering around obstacles.
- Similar to his family honors, he's a considerate crime boss as well who cares about his workers.
- He's an honest worker and family man who was driven out of business and was forced to become criminal to keep supporting his family, which makes him a very relatable bad guy. Sure, his comics self also had a noble side for his family, but he was pretty unapologetic. This version ramped up his good traits from the comics and gave him proper reasons for his actions, even if he's still very evil.
- He has a surprisingly well-executed Hero-Villain relationship to Spider-Man as he is the father of Liz Allan-Toomes in this version and once drove both Peter and Liz to the homecoming dance.
- Likewise, Peter is a young eager teen who looks forward to his future as a hero while Toomes is a frustrated middle-aged man who has seen life and feels he has no choice but become a criminal.
- He's one of the rare cases of an MCU villain who didn't die towards the end of their film. This makes him the first Spider-Man film villain to find out Spidey's secret identity and not die.
- Another scene that only adds to his nobility is that he manages to find out Spidey's secret identity during the film, and after he gets arrested at the end film, he has a chance to reveal Spidey's identity to one of the prisoners but he chooses to keep the secret to himself.
Bad Qualities
- His CGI battles with Spider-Man while Toomes is in his suit, aren't very good. He's surprisingly more menacing when he's in just his human form.
- Despite the tease in the post-credits scene, he did not make a return in Far From Home or No Way Home.
- While it's great to see him again in Morbius, many people were confused as to how the Vulture ended up in Sony's Spider-Man Universe and it only brings lots of plot holes:
- Apparently, this is due to Doctor Strange's second spell in Spider-Man: No Way Home that erases everyone's memories of MCU Peter Parker, except that's not how the spell works. The spell was meant to return people from outside the MCU back to their home universes. How did Toomes get pulled out of his universe? And the fact that Toomes got kicked out of his own universe just feels confusing.
- How did he make another Vulture suit with little time and effort?
- The problem is that Toomes is from the MCU which means he should have stayed in the MCU with only his memories of Peter Parker erased instead of being transported to the SSU, making it a massive plot hole.
- The scene in which he recruits Morbius doesn't make sense. Why would he want to recruit a guy he doesn't know and who had no impact on him but a guy from an entirely different dimension? And Morbius blindly agrees to team up with him?
Trivia
- Adrian Toomes is never referred to as "Vulture" in the film.
- Michael Keaton appeared in movies from both the Marvel Cinematic Universe and DC Comics thus far, having played Vulture and Batman, respectively.