15 Best Movie Villains Of The Decade

Almost three decades after he unexpectedly laughed in the face of everyone questioning his casting as Bruce Wayne and Batman, Michael Keaton returned to comic book movies (by way of another meta-performance in Birdman, of course) to show he could play the other side of the coin too.

Vulture had been ear-marked for Sam Raimi's Spider-Man series (though John Malkovich's mooted casting would have presumably meant a camper, more colourful focus), but here, he was a post-Avengers firebrand. Taking in both the real folk left in ruins by the financial crash and the idea of superhero accountability and collateral damage, Keaton's Adrian Toomes was no more than a man trying to scratch a living and twisted by redundancy and a hatred of Tony Stark's "elitism" into something more extreme. Crucially, he never lost his empathetic status either.

The twist of having him so closely and personally tied to Peter Parker was inspired and Keaton's ability to play two characters at once - the public face and the hidden darkness - that had worked so well for Batman made his casting here genius.