Director Jon Watts on Why The Vulture Is the Villain in SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING

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We’ve already had a taste of what Spider-Man will be like in the MCU, but I’m extremely curious to see how Marvel handles The Vulture in Spider-Man: Homecoming. We got a really quick glimpse of him in action in the footage that was screened at Comic-Con, but there’s still no word on who exactly is playing him, or how he will tie into the story.

There are rumors that Michael Keaton is playing the character, but that has not been confirmed, so we’ll just have to wait and see. While we wait, director Jon Watts talked about why they chose The Vulture to be the main villain of the story. This is what he told ComicBook.com in a recent interview:

"Well, we wanted to sort of go back to the origins of what made Spider-Man and Peter Parker so unique you know, and that's why we just sort of really doubled down on the idea that he is a kid. He is a high school student in this crazy universe. He has to keep his identity a secret, which a lot of the other characters in the MCU don't, um, and just, in general, going back to those origins ya know. The Vulture is really the first supervillain that Spider-Man ever fights in Amazing Spider-Man, the second issue, after the chameleon, so it just felt like the right thing to do, to go back to the roots in that way."

There are a ton of villains that they could have chosen from, but I’m happy that The Vulture is the character they went with. Watts also said that one of the other reasons they picked him was because it could offer some cool visuals during the fight sequences:

"We talked about a lot of different things but The Vulture always sort of rose to the top and just the opportunity to have Spider-Man versus a guy that can fly really lends itself to some pretty cool visuals."

We got a little taste of what one of these scenes could look like thanks to some concept art that was released, but I’m excited to see what some of these visuals look like on the big screen. Spider-Man: Homecoming swings into theaters on July 7th, 2017.