Even those who haven't seen Spider-Man: Homecoming should know that Michael Keaton's Adrian Toomes is a salvage worker who somehow turns villain as The Vulture. But no one would have expected the character to be one of Peter Parker's teachers!
Screenwriters Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley recently told Yahoo Movies that the original plan was for the super villain to actually be a teacher at the Midtown School of Science and Technology.
The Vulture in the comic books is significantly different from the Homecoming character. But Goldstein said that they never intended to depict a comic-accurate version:
Once we started talking about Vulture, it was clear that the version in the comics wouldn't do, where he was this bald old man. It just never felt terribly scary on film to us (laughs). So we thought, “All right, let's make him more of a middle-aged guy.”
The intention was to have the character be a science teacher at Peter's school, but it's unclear whether he would have been Toomes or Clifton Shallot, the third Vulture. In the comic books, Shallot was a professor at Empire State University. Daley explained:
He was still stealing from Damage Control, but we had a different way into it. It was going to be his teacher, and then we were like, “No, let's separate him fully from the school "” or, at least, so it seems.”
It's highly unlikely that Goldstein and Daley would regret anything about Spider-Man: Homecoming. The movie’s become one of the most critically acclaimed Marvel Cinematic Universe installments, and Michael Keaton’s character is regarded as one of its best super villains. The movie is also doing great at the box office, earning $163.1 million domestically and $302.6 million globally in its first week in theaters.
