Sony Pictures released two trailers for Spider-Man: Homecoming today. While one focused on a young Peter Parker becoming Marvel’s most notorious superhero, the other offered some interesting information about Vulture.
[Warning: The following contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Homecoming.]
Vulture, one of Parker’s oldest foes and a new entry in the Spider-Man franchise, is the main villain. According to Marvel’s international spot for Homecoming, Vulture has been planning to attack the Avengers for some time. It’s revealed in the trailer that Vulture has been a part of the maintenance crew that has to clean up after the Avengers whenever something happens in New York. In one scene in particular, Vulture (played by Michael Keaton) can be seen cleaning up one of the chitauri that has fallen onto the streets of Manhattan following the climactic battle in The Avengers.
Vulture has a couple of scenes where he references moments from past Marvel Cinematic Universe films, including a point where he holds up Iron Man’s faceplate. It’s obvious that he’s fed up with the “rich and powerful” superheroes, as he calls them, that roam their city and leave a mess for the rest of the regular, ordinary citizens. His frustration with Iron Man, Captain America and the rest of the crew is what eventually leads Vulture to take matters into his own hands, crafting a villain powerful enough to destroy the Avengers.
“Someone is collecting stuff from the Avengers battles and making and building these crazy weapons,” Spider-Man explains.
The decision to tie Vulture and subsequently Spider-Man into previous Marvel movies is a smart move on the studio’s part. This is Spider-Man’s big welcome home to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and by including references to previous movies that took place before Spider-Man existed in their world it makes it seem like he was there all along. Having Iron Man be a consistent figure in the movie and using shaky handheld camera footage from Captain America: Civil War is just another example of how Marvel plans to introduce their lost boy.
It also does a great job of addressing the question many fans have asked after every superhero movie: Who cleans up the city once the heroes have finished destroying it? Dealing with the destruction that comes with the Avengers’ efforts to save the world was a big theme in Captain America: Civil War and it looks like that will continue into Homecoming.
Spider-Man: Homecoming will be released on July 7.
