Spider-Man: Homecoming - 6 Villains Michael Keaton Could Play (& 4 He Shouldn't)
From Birdman to a bird, man?
After a month in the wilderness, it turns out Michael Keaton actually is set to play the villain in Spider-Man: Homecoming, and you can almost taste the excitement. All that remains now is working out who he's going to be playing.
Obviously, it isn't just a matter of shoe-horning in one of Spider-Man's most iconic villains in the hope that status will trump narrative coherence. If the big bad isn't right for Homecoming and its John Hughes-infused elements, then they aren't the right choice no matter how iconic. So it's a question of balance, and of story logic.
But then as The Amazing Spider-Man and its sequel proved, you have to have a certain level of brand awareness. It's no good going Z-list and hoping Keaton's performance will sell it alone.
So with those precise requirements in mind, who should Michael Keaton play? And more importantly, who should he definitely not? Let's start with the good suggestions...
6. Doctor Octopus
Having played Beetlejuice and channelled his zanier side for parts of Birdman, Keaton obviously knows how to play crazy. He has an incredible knack for a creepy sort of detachment from reality that makes him both irresistibly charismatic and hauntingly odd, and that would work beautifully for Doc Ock.
The character is brilliantly intelligent, charismatic and a lunatic, and he could provide Keaton with the potential to play an otherworldly, larger than life villain with a sympathetic edge. Plus he'd fit with Parker's fascination with technology and his own supreme IQ: he's sort of an anti-Spider-Man and the parallel would add depth to the narrative.
Alfred Molina may have offered a definitive performance as the character, but it's about time we got another, with Keaton likely to add something entirely different to Molina's take.