Spider-Man: Homecoming featured a battle between two huge superheroes. No, not Spider-Man and Iron Man, but rather, the wall-crawler and the Dark Knight.
Tom Holland’s nemesis in the movie was Adrian Toomes AKA Vulture, played by none other than Michael Keaton, he of Tim Burton’s Batman fame. Fans of Keaton will know that he continues to embrace his iconic DC role and even lampooned himself when he portrayed an actor most famous for playing a superhero in 2014’s Birdman.
It turns out that Keaton also couldn’t resist reminding his co-star of his history with Marvel’s rival while filming Homecoming. Holland was asked what it was like to work with the actor while attending a panel at this weekend’s ACE Comic-Con in Seattle and to show what sort of guy he was, Holland mentioned a deleted scene in which Keaton broke character and said “I’m Batman!”
“Oh absolutely. There’s a great scene – it’s not in the movie, it was cut short – where I carry the Vulture out of the flames when he nearly dies and I rescue him, and I lay him down on the sand and he says, I think the line was ‘Why did you save me?’ And I’m like, ‘because I’m Spider-Man,’ and then he goes, ‘But I’m Batman!’”
The Homecoming star went on to recall another memorable moment he shared with Keaton as well. During filming on the intense face-off that Peter Parker and Toomes have in the latter’s car, Holland discussed how quickly his colleague could go from menacing to casual and conversational once the cameras were off. The result was apparently pretty unnerving.
“I will never forget that. He was amazing to work with. Terrifying. That scene we shot in the car was so stressful, was so unbelievably stressful, and we shot it for a whole day and as soon as you’d call ‘cut’ he was like the nicest guy ever and you’d be talking about whatever, but then you’d call ‘action’ and he would sort of become this villain and I’d be like, ‘Okay, cut!’ But it was amazing to work with him.”
It’s a good thing that Holland and Keaton get along so well, as they’ll work together again on Spider-Man: Far From Home. Despite being locked up in jail at the end of Spider-Man: Homecoming, Toomes will be back in the upcoming sequel. But will he work together with Jake Gyllenhaal’s Mysterio and form the the Sinister Six? The answers will be revealed when Far From Home releases on July 5th, 2019.