Spider-Man Homecoming Almost Turned the Vulture Into Peter Parker's Science Teacher

Before Michael Keaton put on the Vulture's wings, Adrian Toomes almost showed up in a completely different Spider-Man movie, played by a different actor, with a completely different relationship to Peter Parker. Homecoming went through several versions of Toomes, several different mentor figures for Peter, and even a different way for Peter to make money as Spider-Man, before landing on the film audiences actually got.

Sam Raimi Nearly Built Spider-Man 4 Around Vulture With John Malkovich

Sam Raimi planned to use Adrian Toomes as the primary villain of Spider-Man 4, with John Malkovich lined up to play him opposite Tobey Maguire. This version of Toomes would have been a former government operative and private contractor with a particularly brutal reputation, allegedly earning the nickname the Vulture because when he finished a job, he left virtually nothing behind but bones.

The project actually made it surprisingly far into pre-production, with costume designers developing Vulture's enormous mechanical wings for Malkovich. But when Raimi struggled to get the screenplay into a shape he was happy with, he eventually walked away from the project altogether, and Sony abandoned Spider-Man 4 in favor of rebooting the franchise with Andrew Garfield. Vulture was once again left sitting on the shelf.

Nearly a decade later, when Marvel and Sony began developing Tom Holland's first solo movie, writers Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley finally brought Vulture back. Their reasoning was pretty simple: they deliberately wanted Homecoming to have much smaller stakes than the average MCU movie. Peter was still a kid figuring out how to be Spider-Man, so throwing him against someone like Doctor Octopus or Green Goblin would have immediately raised the question of why the actual Avengers weren't dealing with it. Vulture offered the perfect middle ground, dangerous enough to challenge Peter, but ultimately just a guy trying to make money rather than conquer the world.

Toomes Was Originally Peter's Science Teacher Before Becoming Liz's Father

The Adrian Toomes that Goldstein and Daley initially envisioned was considerably different from the one audiences eventually got. They felt that the traditional comic book version, a frail, bald, elderly man flying around in a bird costume, simply wouldn't be particularly intimidating on screen, so they immediately began aging him down into a more physically imposing middle aged character.

More importantly, the original screenplay actually made Toomes Peter Parker's science teacher. He would also operate the illegal weapons business built around scavenging with the Avengers and their enemies' leftover tech, hence the nickname the Vulture. But during the day, Peter would unknowingly be sitting in his classroom learning science from the very man he was trying to hunt down as Spider-Man. The idea was originally designed to naturally connect Peter's high school story with the superhero story.

Eventually the writers decided it was more interesting to keep those two worlds completely separate, or at least make Peter believe they were separate. That decision ultimately led them to one of the movie's greatest twists, making Toomes the father of Peter's crush, Liz. Instead of Peter slowly discovering that his science teacher was the Vulture, the two storylines seemingly have nothing to do with one another until Peter knocks on Liz's front door and Michael Keaton answers it. According to Daley, making Toomes Liz's father grew directly out of their decision to abandon the science teacher version.

Toomes' Vulture Gear Was Once Meant to Come From a Shared Past With Falcon

Toomes' backstory was also originally going to tie much more directly into the larger MCU. An early version had Adrian serving in the same military drop unit as Sam Wilson, better known as Falcon. His Vulture equipment was therefore envisioned as a crude predecessor, a relative of Falcon's exo-suit, a much larger, clunkier piece of flight technology that Toomes had essentially cobbled together himself.

That entire connection to Falcon was eventually abandoned, but traces of the idea survived in the final design, particularly the military flight gear, bomber jacket, and enormous mechanical wings that look less like a superhero costume and more like a small aircraft strapped to his back.

John Leguizamo Nearly Played Vulture Before Michael Keaton Came Back

Even after the character had been completely reinvented, Michael Keaton nearly didn't land the role at all. Keaton initially entered negotiations for the part, but when those talks broke down, John Leguizamo was brought in to replace him.

According to Leguizamo, negotiations progressed so far that he believed the part was essentially his, but then Keaton changed his mind and wanted the role back, prompting Sony to ask Leguizamo if he would step aside. He reluctantly agreed, with the studio apparently promising to find another role for him, only to later offer what Leguizamo described as something tiny, which he turned down.

Nick Fury Was Originally Set to Be Peter's Mentor Instead of Tony Stark

One of the defining elements of Homecoming is Peter's relationship with Tony Stark, who becomes the larger than life superhero Peter desperately wants to impress, with the movie revolving around Peter trying to prove he deserves a place alongside him in the Avengers. But before Tony became Peter's reluctant mentor, director Jon Watts had something very different in mind: Nick Fury.

That dynamic would have been almost the complete opposite of what Peter eventually got with Tony. Stark is impressed by Peter, gives him an incredibly advanced Spider-Man suit, and despite frequently ignoring his phone calls, clearly sees some of himself in the kid. Fury, though, would have had considerably less patience. Watts described Tony as Peter's cool, rich uncle, whereas Fury would have been more like his mean, new stepdad, viewing Spider-Man less as a kid who needs guidance and more as an extremely powerful asset who keeps getting distracted by insignificant high school problems.

Watts originally described Fury as essentially being Peter's mean substitute teacher, which would have perfectly contrasted with the original idea of Toomes being Peter's friendly science teacher. Rather than Peter desperately trying to get the attention of an Avenger who keeps brushing him off, the conflict would have come from the opposite direction, with Fury actively inserting himself into Peter's life and expecting a 15 year old superhero to behave like one of his trained shield agents. Watts loved the contradiction of putting an optimistic, idealistic teenager opposite a cynical, world weary super spy who has no interest in Peter's homework, crushes, or problems at school.

Marvel ultimately decided to use Tony for two reasons: Downey's chemistry with Holland in Civil War was electric, so pairing them together again was a no-brainer, and Downey is box office, which mattered for launching a new Spider-Man franchise after the previous film series underperformed. Watts clearly never gave up on his original idea though. When he returned for Far From Home, he finally got to build a movie around the relationship he had originally imagined, with Peter dragged into a globe-trotting mission by Nick Fury while desperately trying to worry about completely normal teenage problems instead.

Peter Was Almost a Spider-Man YouTuber Instead of a Daily Bugle Photographer

Another major piece of Spider-Man mythology the filmmakers deliberately avoided was the Daily Bugle. In the comics, and especially Sam Raimi's trilogy, Peter Parker famously makes money by taking photos of himself as Spider-Man and selling them to J. Jonah Jameson, who then uses those photos to run stories about how Spider-Man is a dangerous menace. Marvel felt audiences had already seen enough of the traditional Daily Bugle and wanted a completely different way of bringing that part of Peter's life into the MCU.

They actually toyed with the idea of a newspaper for a while, but struggled with how to make it feel contemporary. Having a 15 year old Peter somehow balancing high school, fighting crime, and a part-time job at an old-fashioned newspaper simply didn't feel particularly believable anymore. Instead, the writers came up with a way of modernizing the basic idea without using the Daily Bugle at all: Peter would secretly film himself as Spider-Man with a GoPro and upload the footage online, with the clips racking up views and Peter actually making money from ad revenue.

The idea ultimately disappeared once Marvel decided that Homecoming needed to connect more directly to Peter's appearance in Civil War, but instead of throwing it away completely, the writers combined the two concepts. The GoPro footage of Peter independently documenting his adventures evolved into the opening of the finished movie, where Peter records his trip to Germany on his phone. Marvel would eventually arrive at the other half of this idea anyway: when the Daily Bugle finally entered the MCU in Far From Home, it wasn't presented as an old-fashioned newspaper but as a modern digital media outlet, exactly the kind of contemporary reinvention the Homecoming filmmakers had been trying to figure out years earlier.

Several Smaller Ideas Were Filmed or Written and Then Cut

Homecoming went through a number of smaller ideas that were eventually abandoned. Originally, the writers envisioned the ending as Peter's opportunity to recreate the ending of Iron Man, walking through the doors, standing in front of the press, and announcing, "I, Peter Parker, am Spider-Man." Throughout the movie he would have believed that publicly revealing himself would solve his problems, but when actually given the opportunity, he would choose to walk away, recognizing that his secret identity gave him an advantage many of the other Avengers no longer had.

That ending also originally featured a more direct reference to the most famous line in Spider-Man history. When Happy meets Peter in the school bathroom to take him to Avengers headquarters, he was going to tell him that Tony had one final piece of advice: "With great power comes something I forgot." The joke was ultimately cut because it felt a little too meta. Uncle Ben himself nearly got a bigger acknowledgement too. Originally, when Aunt May helped Peter prepare for the Homecoming dance, she would take him into the closet and pull out one of Uncle Ben's old suits for him to wear, but it was felt that if they were finally going to address Ben's death, it shouldn't just be tossed in for a single emotional beat before immediately moving on, so the reference was removed.

Another deleted moment that was actually filmed showed Donald Glover stuck to the car calling his nephew to tell him, "Yeah, sorry Miles, I'm not going to make it," explicitly referencing Miles Morales. The Staten Island ferry sequence also originally featured substantially more Avengers, with War Machine envisioned assisting Tony in repairing the damaged ferry. And one of the weirdest abandoned ideas had nothing to do with Spider-Man at all: during production, Homecoming operated under the working title The Summer of George, a reference to the Seinfeld episode where George Costanza declares he's going to spend the summer doing exactly what he wants. The crew had been watching Seinfeld reruns while preparing the film and picked the name because it made them laugh, and it became so committed to the joke that they even tried to get Jason Alexander himself into the movie for a cameo, though it never came together.

Homecoming is a fascinating case where many of its abandoned ideas weren't really abandoned at all, they were simply delayed. Nick Fury eventually became Peter's mentor, the Daily Bugle returned as a modern digital outlet, and just two years later, Far From Home ended by doing the very thing Homecoming almost did, revealing Spider-Man's secret identity to the entire world.

Which of these unused ideas, the science teacher twist, the Nick Fury mentorship, or the Spider-Man YouTuber storyline, do you think would have worked best on screen?