49 Fun Facts About Spider-Man: Homecoming

Jackson Brice and Herman Schultz each wear a vibrating gauntlet in Spider-Man: Homecoming under which villain name?

Shocker. Toomes kills the first one, Jackson Brice, by accident with one of the crew's own weapons, then simply hands the gauntlet and the name to Herman Schultz.

Which actor plays Happy Hogan, the Stark aide assigned to look after Peter in Spider-Man: Homecoming?

Jon Favreau. He directed the first two Iron Man films, then came back here with no say behind the camera, and called returning purely as an actor a lot of fun.

What business was Adrian Toomes running before he turned to crime?

Salvage and clean-up after the Battle of New York. A new federal agency takes the contract away mid-job, so Toomes keeps the alien wreckage his crew has already collected and builds weapons from it.

What is the name of the government partnership with Tony Stark that pushes Toomes out of business?

Department of Damage Control. Its director, played by Tyne Daly, orders Toomes off the site, and he answers by quietly keeping the alien scrap he was meant to hand over.

Whose technology does Toomes's crew scavenge to build their weapons?

Chitauri. Toomes keeps the supply topped up himself, flying out in his winged suit to rob the government trucks that haul their wreckage away.

Which school does Peter Parker attend in Spider-Man: Homecoming?

Midtown School of Science and Technology. To prepare, Tom Holland spent a few days undercover as a pupil at the real Bronx High School of Science.

Which school team does Peter Parker quit, then rejoin, to follow the weapons trail out of New York?

Academic decathlon. He rejoins only once a tracker shows the weapons leaving the state, then misses the tournament anyway, shut inside a government truck.

Who is the first person to discover Peter Parker's secret identity in Spider-Man: Homecoming?

Ned. He is waiting in Peter's bedroom with a Lego Death Star when Spider-Man crawls in across the ceiling, and he drops the model in disbelief.

Who plays Ned in Spider-Man: Homecoming?

Jacob Batalon. Lewis Pullman auditioned for the same part and lost out to him, then joined Marvel a decade later as Sentry in Thunderbolts*.

Homecoming's Ned borrows heavily from which best friend of Miles Morales in the Spider-Man comics?

Ganke Lee. The filmmakers blended him with another comics character, Ned Leeds, to make their own, and the film's version only gets the surname Leeds in the sequel.

Where does the Vulture drop Peter Parker after their first encounter in Spider-Man: Homecoming?

Into a lake. He nearly drowns before Tony Stark, who has been tracking the suit, has him fished out and warns him to stay away from the weapons dealers.

Which actor plays Aaron Davis, the crook who tries to buy weapons from Toomes's crew in Homecoming?

Donald Glover. A 2010 online campaign had pushed for him to play Spider-Man himself; the film's director watched it up close and asked for him as soon as he got the job.

Who plays Michelle, the classmate who mocks Peter from the sidelines in Spider-Man: Homecoming?

Zendaya. Her character spends the film mocking her classmates from the edge of the room, then ends it as the new captain of Peter's school team when Liz moves away.

In Spider-Man: Homecoming, what does an exploding alien power core trap Peter's classmates inside?

A Washington Monument elevator. The writers kept Peter away from skyscrapers until this scene, so that his climb up the outside would give him, and the audience, real vertigo.

Which vehicle is torn in half by a malfunctioning weapon while Peter Parker fights the Vulture?

The Staten Island Ferry. Peter boards it to catch an arms buyer, and once it splits it takes Tony Stark's arrival to help him save the passengers.

How does Tony Stark punish Peter Parker's recklessness midway through Spider-Man: Homecoming?

Takes back the Spider-Man suit. When Peter pleads that he is nothing without it, Stark answers that in that case he shouldn't have it.

What does Peter Parker learn when he collects Liz for the homecoming dance?

Her father is the Vulture. Kevin Feige said that if the moment Toomes opens the door didn't work, the film didn't work, so the story was built backwards and forwards from it.

Where does the cargo plane Peter Parker clings to finally crash in Spider-Man: Homecoming?

On the beach at Coney Island. Peter steers it there himself, then pulls Toomes clear when the damaged wing-suit explodes and leaves the man who tried to kill him for the police.

What is the cargo plane Toomes tries to hijack carrying in Spider-Man: Homecoming?

The Avengers' own equipment. It is all being flown from Avengers Tower to the team's new base upstate, and Toomes plans to rob the plane in mid-air.

How does Peter Parker answer Tony Stark's offer of a full-time place in the Avengers?

He turns it down. Stark had the press waiting to meet the new Avenger, so he has to find another announcement and produces an engagement ring for Pepper Potts instead.

Who walks in on Peter Parker in his Spider-Man suit in the final scene of Homecoming?

Aunt May. Kevin Feige compared it to Tony Stark announcing he is Iron Man: an ending chosen because it would force the next film to do something fresh with the secret identity.

Mac Gargan, the tattooed crook who confronts Toomes in prison in Homecoming, is which villain in the Spider-Man comics?

Scorpion. He wants Spider-Man's real name, and Toomes, who knows it, tells him he doesn't: a last flicker of decency the director wanted the villain to have.

Which actress makes a surprise return as Pepper Potts near the end of Spider-Man: Homecoming?

Gwyneth Paltrow. An earlier film had explained her absence as a break-up with Tony Stark, but here the pair are back together and he walks out to face the press holding a ring.

Who plays Adrian Toomes, the Vulture, in Spider-Man: Homecoming?

Michael Keaton. He dropped out over a clash with another film, and John Leguizamo had negotiated for the part when Keaton became free again and Marvel asked Leguizamo to give it up.

Which Broadway star turned down the villain's role in Spider-Man: Homecoming, saying he would have been deeply miscast?

Lin-Manuel Miranda. Kevin Feige told him the whole plot over the phone, but shooting would have begun right after his run in Hamilton, and he felt he was wrong for the Vulture.

Tom Holland's Spider-Man made his screen debut in which film before Homecoming?

Captain America: Civil War. Early in Homecoming, a home video Peter calls 'A Film by Peter Parker' retells that film's airport battle from his side.

Homecoming's director compared Michelle to a character Ally Sheedy played in which 1980s film?

The Breakfast Club. Sheedy played Allison Reynolds in it, and the young Homecoming actors took to calling themselves the Breakfast Club on set.

Which nickname does Michelle say her friends call her at the end of Spider-Man: Homecoming?

MJ. She is not the comics' Mary Jane Watson: the writers borrowed the initials to plant a seed, and two sequels later her full name turned out to be Michelle Jones-Watson.

Who plays Flash Thompson, reimagined in Spider-Man: Homecoming as a rich, smug rival rather than a jock?

Tony Revolori. He had auditioned for Peter Parker; cast as the bully instead, he received hate mail and death threats from fans because he didn't match the Flash of the comics.

Who voices Karen, the AI in Peter Parker's Stark-built suit in Spider-Man: Homecoming?

Jennifer Connelly. Peter only hears her once the 'Training Wheels' limits Stark built into the suit are hacked off, and her husband, Paul Bettany, had voiced Stark's own AI.

Which Avenger appears in Spider-Man: Homecoming only in public service announcements played at Peter's school?

Captain America. The film's last joke is one more of his announcements after the credits: a lecture on patience, aimed at the audience that has just sat through them.

Which actor plays Mr. Harrington in Spider-Man: Homecoming, reprising a bit part from The Incredible Hulk?

Martin Starr. In 2008 he was a nameless student in a university computer lab, and Kevin Feige later confirmed that the student had grown up to be Mr. Harrington.

What does Stan Lee's cameo character, Gary, do in Spider-Man: Homecoming?

Scolds Spider-Man for the noise. Gary joins the neighbours shouting from their windows after the hero webs up a man who was only getting into his own car and sets off its alarm.

The boombox punk in Spider-Man: Homecoming is played by the man Spock nerve-pinched on a bus in which Star Trek film?

The Voyage Home. Kirk Thatcher was an associate producer on that film who also played its punk and wrote the song blaring from his boombox, then brought the look back for Homecoming.

Homecoming was filmed under the working title 'Summer of George', which is also an episode title from which sitcom?

Seinfeld. In the episode, George Costanza treats three months' severance pay as three months off, and the film's sequel kept the joke going by shooting as 'Fall of George'.

Where was most of Spider-Man: Homecoming actually shot?

Atlanta, Georgia. Tom Holland said it was cheaper to build New York sets there than to shoot in New York, so the production reached the real city only for its final days.

Under the 2015 deal that brought Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which studio kept final creative control?

Sony. It went on paying for, releasing and owning the films and kept the last word, yet in practice it deferred to Marvel's team on the creative choices.

In May 2015, the search for a new Spider-Man was reported as narrowed to which two actors?

Holland and Asa Butterfield. Both then auditioned on camera opposite the films' Tony Stark with four other hopefuls, and the last cut left Holland facing a different rival, Charlie Rowe.

Which director's teen films did Kevin Feige name as a major influence on Spider-Man: Homecoming?

John Hughes. Feige's reasoning was that in high school everything feels like life or death, so Peter's growing up had to matter as much as his heroics.

Which artist drew the 1966 comic that Homecoming honours when Peter lifts himself free of the rubble?

Steve Ditko. In The Amazing Spider-Man #33 the hero strains for pages under wrecked machinery before heaving it off, an image Kevin Feige had wanted to put on screen for years.

Which Spider-Man staple did Marvel deliberately leave out of Homecoming, saying it would need to feel contemporary?

The Daily Bugle. Co-producer Eric Carroll said the team toyed with it but didn't want to go down that road yet, and it finally turned up in the next film as a conspiracy-minded news website.

Who composed the score for Spider-Man: Homecoming?

Michael Giacchino. Kevin Feige let the news slip at a Doctor Strange screening before it had been announced, and the score itself quotes the theme from the 1960s Spider-Man cartoon.

Iron Man's armour in Spider-Man: Homecoming is just his previous suit repainted; what ruled out a new design?

The budget. The studio paying for the film couldn't stretch to a new suit, so Kevin Feige asked for a colour scheme borrowed from the Ultimate Iron Man comics instead.

Which Homecoming actor was reportedly paid at least $10 million for a brief supporting role?

Robert Downey Jr. The studio's film chief called his casting wonderful commercially but said that was not why: after their earlier meeting, the story needed Tony Stark as Peter's mentor.

Aaron Davis, the small-time crook in Spider-Man: Homecoming, goes by which costumed name in the comics?

Prowler. The film never says the name aloud: it is only listed among his aliases, and he mentions a nephew, a wink at the future Spider-Man Miles Morales.

Homecoming's $117 million debut was the second-biggest for a Spider-Man film at the time, behind which earlier entry?

Spider-Man 3. Its $151.1 million opening from 2007 was still the best for the character and for the studio, even though the series had been restarted twice since.

Which film replaced Homecoming at number one in North America in its second weekend?

War for the Planet of the Apes. Homecoming's takings fell 62% that weekend, yet after ten days it had already out-earned the entire North American run of The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

Which country was Spider-Man: Homecoming's largest market outside the United States and Canada?

China. The film opened there two months after the US, backed by a campaign in which Tom Holland recorded a greeting for students sitting their high school entrance exams.

Which actress plays Peter Parker's aunt in Spider-Man: Homecoming?

Marisa Tomei. She negotiated the whole deal without knowing how elderly the character is in the comics, said she was horrified to find out, then offered to play her older and was turned down.