Over the last several years, Michael Keaton has enjoyed a career renaissance, rising from the trappings of second-rate family films and thrillers (like Jack Frost or Herbie: Fully Loaded) like a majestic phoenix from the ashes.
His wings were once clipped, but now he soars, picking off critically acclaimed acting roles like a bird of prey.The avian similes are fitting because of Keaton’s winged character choices as of late, such as in Alejandro G. Inarritu’s Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) — which scored the actor an Oscar nomination — and now the Vulture in Marvel’s Spider-Man: Homecoming. Across these two films, he essentially plays out his own career in a stupendously meta and cathartic way that shows just how emotive and varied a thespian he can be. In many ways, The Vulture is a role Keaton has been preparing for since Tim Burton’s Batman in 1989 — and one that people may not have been able to take seriously had he not done Birdman in between.
Let’s start with Birdman, the 2014 film credited with his career renaissance and which stars Keaton as Riggan Thomson, a washed-up actor who’s only famous for his role as the superhero Birdman in a popular trilogy of movies 20 years previously. He’s plagued by strange hallucinations of his former superheroic persona. Though Keaton never starred in a trilogy (he exited the franchise after 1992’s Batman Returns), those years playing Bruce Wayne surely showed him what it means to balance one’s identities and burdens, something that feeds heavily into his latest role as Adrian Toomes (aka The Vulture) in Spider-Man: Homecoming.
While pundits have argued Birdman completed Keaton’s journey back to the A-list, there’s an argument that Spider-Man actually completes that journey.
There’s nothing more A-list than doing a string of critically acclaimed movies and then jumping into a giant franchise like Spider-Man. Bonus points if that role also gives you serious dramatics to dig into, and that’s certainly the case with the Vulture.And in a way, there’s a strong throughline from Birdman to Spider-Man. It’s not hard to imagine that Riggan went totally nuts after the ambiguous ending of Birdman and decided to become a New York City supervillain, turning his once heroic legacy into one of infamy…
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