Spidey braves scary dads, supervillains
Meeting the parents proves a lot hairier than usual for hero
Spoiler alert! The following discusses an important plot point of the movie SpiderMan: Homecoming.
The teen superhero encounters all manner of freaky situations in Spider
Man: Homecoming — saving his peers from falling down the elevator shaft of the Washington Monument, trying to keep the Staten Island Ferry from splitting in half — but the worst has to be meeting his girlfriend’s dad. Thunder in the background on the
Homecoming set foreshadows the movie’s biggest twist: When Peter Parker ( Tom Holland) arrives at a large suburban house to pick up his homecoming date, Liz ( Laura Harrier), his archenemy Adrian Toomes ( Michael Keaton), aka Vulture, answers the door.
“You must be Peter. I’m Liz’s dad,” says Toomes, as Peter’s face turns white with the realization.
“It’s a scene a lot of people can relate to,” says director Jon Watts, noting that the moment is meant to tweak a teenmovie convention. “It’s this awkward thing of meeting your friend’s dad ( when) you’ve been hunting him and know his nefarious plans. You get to make everything really heightened in a way that wouldn’t necessarily work if there were no fantastical element.”
Toomes later puts it together that this kid also is the masked hero who has been putting a dent in his black- market business of selling high- tech weapons. But when Peter arrives, he’s just trying to make the nervous boy comfortable while doing the dishes.
“Bourbon or scotch?” he asks, followed by a stammering “I don’t drink, sir” from Peter. “That’s the right answer,” Toomes responds approvingly, waving a large kitchen knife in his direction.
“One of the things we loved about it is how it really brings to a head the conflict between having a regular life as Peter Parker and being this superhero,” says co- producer Eric Hauserman Carroll. “Every once in a while, there’s going to be a conflict of interest between the two sides of his life.”
Liz comes down in a red dress and her mom ( Garcelle Beauvais) tries to get her and Peter together for a quick picture, though he can’t help but keep an eye on his fatherly foe.
“This kid is great — really sharp, man. Whip- smart and funny,” Keaton says of Holland during a break. “He plays it real.”
Toomes has been tapped as the chauffeur for the evening and says, “Come on, Pedro!” — though Keaton asks Watts if he’s grabbing Holland by the shoulder too hard in a playful gesture that ends the scene. “Just a little clamp,” the director says.
No one’s more geeked out by filming on this night than Watts.
“When have Spider- Man and Batman been in the same scene?”
For Holland, the scene is great because “the audience is going to be freaking out when they see it,” he says. “You know the moments when people are going to be holding their faces and looking through their fingers, and this is one of those moments.”