Despite being the star attraction of the Morbius’ post-credit sting, Michael Keaton has revealed the muddled thinking that led to his appearance.
We know Sony’s cinematic universe of Spider-Man characters is in something of a fuddle right now, not least because of the recent failure of Madame Web, the latest entry in Sony’s series of ‘Spider-Man adjacent’ movies. While it’s bad enough that some fans have now sat through half a dozen hours waiting for a fleeting appearance from the beloved Marvel superhero that is probably never going to happen, it makes things even worse when the films aren’t actually that great.
We gave Madame Web a very poor review and we certainly weren’t alone. Even the film’s star, Dakota Johnson has criticised the film’s production calling it filmmaking ‘by committee’ and whilst we can debate the finer points of Johnson’s actions in harming the release of the movie all day long, it’s hard to argue with her assessment of the film’s quality.
One actor who found himself pulled into Sony’s cinematic universe (albeit briefly) is Michael Keaton.
The Batman star is of course a legend of the superhero world and as well as being one of the best to ever don the Dark Knight’s cape and cowl, he also gave us Adrian Toombes, the delightfully blue collar Vulture who clashed with Tom Holland’s Peter Parker in 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming.
Despite being a part of Marvel Studios’ cinematic universe, Keaton found himself agreeing to appear in a head-scratching post-credit cameo sequence in 2022’s Morbius, another Sony Spider-Man spin-off that found itself struggling to win over fans at launch.
According to Keaton, the same lack of a strong creative vision that Johnson recently criticised was a problem then too, with nobody able to really explain to the actor why his character was there or what the future plans for Keaton’s Vulture were.
Speaking to the HappySadConfused podcast, Keaton summarised the coherence behind his appearance with a simple “No. No idea. None, zero,” before adding that the creatives behind the film tried to explain things to him.
“Then they said okay, and even they couldn’t quite explain it. [I was like], ‘I really don’t quite know what you’re talking about or [who] some of these people are’”.
When the director tried to explain, “it was complicated because they were, obviously, looking down the road.”
The eventual cameo would leave fans scratching their heads, much the same as Keaton. We hope that strange appearance isn’t the last time we see Keaton’s Vulture on screen but we’d suggest a reappearance in a mainline Spider-Man film would be a better use of Keaton’s talents. Given the way he describes this strange episode, Keaton probably agrees too.
