‘I had to Google myself:’ Michael Keaton completely forgot he was a Marvel villain

Michael Keaton, the man who once donned the Batsuit, switched to the Marvel universe for a pivotal villain role in Spider-Man: Homecoming. He played Vulture, a tech-based, flying criminal who (spoiler alert) is later revealed to be the father of Peter Parker’s high school girlfriend.

It was a good part for Keaton, and Vulture is still remembered as one of the better MCU villains. Remembered by everyone except Keaton himself, that is.

While doing the Wired Autocomplete Interview on September 5, Keaton came across the question, “Who does Michael Keaton play in Spider-Man?” And he was seemingly not completely sure himself. “I just saw this shot the other day. That great shot in the car, where I’m looking in the mirror. Somebody was asking me a question about this and I actually couldn’t remember,” he said. “I had to Google myself to figure out what the hell I was doing in that shot … and I’m Vulture, of course.”

Vulture, a.k.a. Adrian Toomes, hasn’t shown up in a MCU project since Homecoming, but (just to confuse everybody) he did show up at the end of the critically panned Sony movie Morbius. There, he suggests teaming up with Jared Leto’s ill-fated vampire … and that was it. Oh, you thought that was setting up for a Sinister Six movie? Nope, Morbius did so badly that we’ll likely never hear from that character again, and presumably that means Vulture’s been thrown out with him.

Keaton isn’t the only one who’s forgotten that he was in Spider-Man: Homecoming. Gwyneth Paltrow, a.k.a. Pepper Potts, has done the exact same thing. While appearing on The Chef Show with fellow MCU actor Jon Favreau, he told her they were in Homecoming together, and she was baffled, having thought she was in an Avengers film. Do she and Keaton need to pay more attention, or is this a damning indictment of how Marvel makes movies? You be the judge.