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Spiderman: Homecoming - Adrian Toomes (The Vulture) isn't working class

L

Lesath

Member
Yep, when he started his spiel in the warehouse I was like motherfucker you live in a glass house with a swimming pool, fuck off with that working class shit.

That thread about Raimi's Spidey the other day kinda hit this home for me, as if the people involved in Homecoming's production have this hilariously misguided notion of what the impoverished have to go through.
 
S

Snarky(HEART)

Banned
Subpar Spatula said:
And there's legit arguments for that. You either join in the discussion or step back cause there's no point in venting your frustration that people are critical of something you like.
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I can't argue about a movie with people that refuse to actually look and watch the screen in front of them!
 
P

Pai Pai Master

Banned
Lesath said:
Yep, when he started his spiel in the warehouse I was like motherfucker you live in a glass house with a swimming pool, fuck off with that working class shit.

That thread about Raimi's Spidey the other day kinda hit this home for me, as if the people involved in Homecoming's production have this hilariously misguided notion of what the impoverished have to go through.
Click to expand...

You don't think the villain of the movie was maybe exaggerating his hardships a little to justify his life of crime?
 
K

kirblar

Member
Lesath said:
Yep, when he started his spiel in the warehouse I was like motherfucker you live in a glass house with a swimming pool, fuck off with that working class shit.

That thread about Raimi's Spidey the other day kinda hit this home for me, as if the people involved in Homecoming's production have this hilariously misguided notion of what the impoverished have to go through.
Click to expand...
A character being a hypocrite does not mean that he's badly written!
 
A

adj_noun

Member
Comics, you know what to do.

zADjLcp.gif


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRATbL8eI18
 
J

JCHandsom

Member
CrichtonKicks said:
Think about it- to make payroll for enough employees to clean up that huge mess plus rent the needed equipment (a small forklift rental costs my company $2,000 a month, I can only imagine the rental costs on heavy equipment to clean up that level of damage), Toomes would already have be in a multi-million dollar mansion or he owned a company with a sizeable workforce but needed the extra bit from the mortgage to expand enough to meet whatever timelines the city required.

Either way he isn't working class.
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My point was that losing this job would have ruined him, whether or not he started out as working class or not. He had put everything (whatever that would have amounted to) into this job and if he hadn't turned to weapons dealing he would have been left with nothing. That's the "underdog" reading that I got at least.
 
J

Jarmel

Banned
LosDaddie said:
Do people even understand the movies they watch? I seriously don't know anymore.

Toomes had a nice house after 8yrs of black market weapon sales. He was obviously not in that position at the beginning of the movie.
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Slayven said:
Well to be fair he had been operating as the Vulture for a while
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However the movie wants the viewer to empathize with him as a character and even later he's viewed in a sympathetic light as someone simply trying to maintain their livelihood. One of the major themes in the movie was the working class versus the elites and that aspect wasn't only for the intro. We're never shown his personal life before the timeskip so I feel the criticism is still valid especially since post time skip the audience doesn't get a closer glimpse on financial burdens he might be feeling later.
 
L

LosDaddie

Banned
Jarmel said:
We're never shown his personal life before the timeskip so I feel the criticism is still valid especially since post time skip the audience doesn't get a closer glimpse on financial burdens he might be feeling later.
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Showing Toomes personal life before being the Vulture would've ruined HC's big surprise, and one of the best scenes in the movie (the car ride).

So no, the article is still (mostly) bullshit.
 
L

Lesath

Member
kirblar said:
A character being a hypocrite does not mean that he's badly written!
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Oh no, I love characters like Walter White. I just contest the idea that he was written to be a hypocrite.

I mean, they started out good with the whole "they took our jerbs" scenario, but the flash forward robs us of any unambiguous character development and expects us to make logical leaps which results in 2 positions: 1. he's a hypocrite and it's intentional, or 2. they didn't think about it too hard.
 
J

jack_package_200

Banned
kirblar said:
A character being a hypocrite does not mean that he's badly written!
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The problem is, like that Rolling Stone review, people don't recognize the hypocrisy of the character. Like Technomancer said, some audience members latched onto his rhetoric and failed to understand the character.

Fight Club is almost 20 years old and people still don't understand that Tyler Durden was not only a hypocrite but the villain of the film because they identified with the hypocritical ideals.
 
D

DarthMasta

Member
And Peter Parker isn't struggling, can afford how many stolen clothes and backpacks, has his own room, goes out to dinner with his aunt who clearly can afford to make herself look gorgeous at 50.

Yeah. Or maybe, The Vulture is working class, a successful working class dude on the verge of achieving the "American Dream" who gets stiffed by the man! By the end of the movie, sure, he's no longer exactly working class, but that's how he sees himself, because that's what he's always been in his mind, a working stiff, trying to provide for his family.
 
C

ChubbyHuggs

Member
Kin5290 said:
The way I saw it, Toomes wasn't working class at the beginning. Owners of construction companies, which he is coded as, make tons of cash, and his motive for turning to crime is to keep taking care of his family, not to get rich.
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Gaf told me construction workers don't make bank! I thought he had a small crew and went into debt hiring more people and renting trucks. We skip to eight years later with him being The Vulture selling black market alien tech for all those years. I would say he was working class in the beginning and near the end he was just a villian addicted to the nicer things.
 
P

Permanently A

Junior Member
I think Vulture is working class even though he's a small business owner. Because the business was run intimately, he knew everyone on his crew and even called them family. And when Damage Control comes in and screws his business, you get the sense that this isn't something he can just write off and survive - he's put his mortgage up to keep the business going. That's not something you're going to see happening with a "multimillionaire shithead" that the article claims is the logical conclusion to Toomb's situation.
 
J

Jarmel

Banned
LosDaddie said:
Showing Toomes personal life before being the Vulture would've ruined HC's big surprise, and one of the best scenes in the movie (the car ride).

So no, the article is still (mostly) bullshit.
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However the movie does little to support the notion that he's working class when the only glimpse into his personal life is one of extravagence. The movie wants to sell you on the idea of him being middle class but doesn't do much to back it up.

I'm ultimately fine with how it's handled due to the reveal but I can also understand the criticism on this front.
 
O

Ogodei

Member
kswiston said:
Maybe he was before he started stealing alien tech. He mentions that he's been doing that for 8 years.
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The 8 years thing kind of bothered me. Doesn't that mean the MCU's in the future now? Or has the timeline gone differently (like, Iron Man 1 is set in 2008 still, but Avengers isn't in-universe 2012?)
 
P

Pai Pai Master

Banned
Jarmel said:
However the movie does little to support the notion that he's working class when the only glimpse into his personal life is one of extravagence. The movie wants to sell you on the idea of him being middle class but doesn't do much to back it up.

I'm ultimately fine with how it's handled due to the reveal but I can also understand the criticism on this front.
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Toomes is only middle/working class in the beginning of the movie. There's an 8 year timeskip that immediately tells you that he didn't pull a fast one on Damage Control just to recoup his risky investment and that he's still stealing dangerous materials and selling them to the highest bidder no matter who would get killed as a result. I don't think the movie is asking the audience to empathize with Toomes at all outside of the opening scene. It's simply what leads him to his life of crime.

He's only living an extravagant life after 8 years of running a criminal organization, and we don't get to see that until we realize Peter was in HIS house at that nice party. He built himself up from a struggling business owner but the movie is not trying to portray him in that way after the opening scene, it's merely his hypocritical justification for why he does what he does.

I definitely don't think the movie is asking the audience to empathize with the character when it gets to the point that he pulls a gun on his daughter's Homecoming date and threatens to kill everyone he loves.
 
B

blakep267

Member
BronsonLee said:
He WAS working class, he tried to expand to get out, the government screwed him, so he screwed them back

Homie made it and he would've gotten away with it too if it wasn't for those damn meddling kids
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It depends. His employees would IMo be working class. He's the boss and honestly would be sitting in a trailer while his foremen are overseeing the construction
 
K

kirblar

Member
Pai Pai Master said:
Toomes is only middle/working class in the beginning of the movie. There's an 8 year timeskip that immediately tells you that he didn't pull a fast one on Damage Control just to recoup his risky investment and that he's still stealing dangerous materials and selling them to the highest bidder no matter who would get killed as a result. I don't think the movie is asking the audience to empathize with Toomes at all outside of the opening scene. It's simply what leads him to his life of crime.

He's only living an extravagant life after 8 years of running a criminal organization, and we don't get to see that until we realize Peter was in HIS house at that nice party. He built himself up from a struggling business owner but the movie is not trying to portray him in that way after the opening scene, it's merely his hypocritical justification for why he does what he does.

I definitely don't think the movie is asking the audience to empathize with the character when it gets to the point that he pulls a gun on his daughter's Homecoming date and threatens to kill everyone he loves.
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He doesn't want a fair share. He wants to be Stark. (a guy who got rich off weapons dealing.) He's one of the pigs from 1984.
 
P

Palette Swap

Member
I thought that was the whole point of his arc? He starts off as an independent contractor looking for opportunity and feeling screwed by The Man (Stark and the federal government), which he uses to justify his crimes. Even once he's "arrived", he still justifies his immorality with some noble protecting his family from the Man bullshit. That's like Fuck You Got Mine: The Story.

The movie has no ambivalence about how well off he is, as May even spells it out.
 
J

Jarmel

Banned
Pai Pai Master said:
Toomes is only middle/working class in the beginning of the movie. There's an 8 year timeskip that immediately tells you that he didn't pull a fast one on Damage Control just to recoup his risky investment and that he's still stealing dangerous materials and selling them to the highest bidder no matter who would get killed as a result. I don't think the movie is asking the audience to empathize with Toomes at all outside of the opening scene. It's simply what leads him to his life of crime.

He's only living an extravagant life after 8 years of running a criminal organization, and we don't get to see that until we realize Peter was in HIS house at that nice party. He built himself up from a struggling business owner but the movie is not trying to portray him in that way after the opening scene, it's merely his hypocritical justification for why he does what he does.

I definitely don't think the movie is asking the audience to empathize with the character when it gets to the point that he pulls a gun on his daughter's Homecoming date and threatens to kill everyone he loves.
Click to expand...
However Toomes character never gets pushback in the movie regarding his supposedly hypocritical stance and nobody really brings it up. After the time skip he still feels like he's being pushed down by Stark and nobody really challenges that stance so I don't feel him being hypocritical was an intentional theme or element of the movie.

The movie largely throughout its runtime depicts him as a somewhat good guy despite the car ride even at the end when he refuses to divulge Peter's identity.
 
T

Timeaisis

Member
He was a small business owner that got fucked by some rich dude. Then he turned into a villain, and became wealthy. It's really not that hard to understand. I think Toomes was the best thing about Homecoming. People go to great, sometimes dangerous lengths to provide for their family, especially when thy are between a rock and a hard place.

I guess he's "working class" because he actually works. It's a poorly drawn definition, anyway.
 
T

TAJ

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Subpar Spatula said:
Was he? He mortgaged for more equipment and workers. He was already a business owner before the incident.
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Even after he hired more workers he barely had any.
He may have been an individual contractor or sole proprietor before he went after the contract.
And he probably only had a home to mortgage because he's older.
 
B

Blackpanther25

Member
black070 said:
Wasn't he working class prior to becoming the Vulture ? I mean, he led the cleaning crew, but there was no indication he was rich or anything. The contract to clear up after the battle of New York was supposed to be his big break.
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Exactly! People were not paying attention. He lost all of his money the moment the contract was forcefully taken away from him.
 
Subpar Spatula

Subpar Spatula

Banned
Toomes owned and operated a salvaging company in New York. He was able to get a loan or mortgage for more equipment (which is not cheap) to help with the more work. He is a business owner.

The article is telling you that this isn't working class (which is true). There is nothing about Toomes that makes him working class other than our predisposed ideas of what you think the working class really is. That's the point. The movie tries to convince you he is by showing him welding or doing labor (which doesn't make him working class). This is to convince the audience he is the little guy (just like Peter).

Blackpanther25 said:
Exactly! People were not paying attention. He lost all of his money the moment the contract was forcefully taken away from him.
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Businessmen can go broke.
 
S

shockthrill

Banned
Penguin said:
I feel like we're running out of things to discuss about comic book movies...
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one day we will get into the postmodern analysis of superheroes


"Not So Working Class:Adrian Toomes and The hegemonic whiteness of Late Capitalism via a Deleuzian framework of Being in Spider-man"
 
S

sant

Member
There is still an enormous difference between living in a $3 million house while still needing to work for a living vs. living off a family trust and being a billionaire.

Toomes could've come from a working class family. Being a self made dude is a way different mentality than being born rich.
 
T

TAJ

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
blakep267 said:
It depends. His employees would IMo be working class. He's the boss and honestly would be sitting in a trailer while his foremen are overseeing the construction
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I worked for a builder with only a handful of crew and the only time the owner wasn't busting his ass was when he was looking at the plans or marking instructions on the building for us. And that was maybe a tenth of his day.
He had an OK house in an OK area but he was born in the '50s and started working in construction at the beginning of the '70s. There was good money in it until Reagan.
 
B

blakep267

Member
ChubbyHuggs said:
He was out there working with them when they got shut down.
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I'm saying realistically, he's the owner of a construction company. He should be finding future contracts and making sure he has other things to do after this ends. Also it wasn't a 5 man operation. Instead he's overseeing workers and showing them how to do construction. That's silly. " you gotta use the alien tech to cut it. " cmon.
 
S

shawnbuddy

Member
Are you fucking kidding me? He's a contractor. A small business owner, small enough potatoes that losing his current job would ruin him. He does seem to be rich later but that's after stealing alien tech for years.

People will look for any reason to attack this film. They're all Raimi fans, I tells 'ya.
 
D

DeathoftheEndless

Crashing this plane... with no survivors!
Jarmel said:
However Toomes character never gets pushback in the movie regarding his supposedly hypocritical stance and nobody really brings it up. After the time skip he still feels like he's being pushed down by Stark and nobody really challenges that stance so I don't feel him being hypocritical was an intentional theme or element of the movie.
Click to expand...

They double-down on his hypocrisy with his hate for Tony Stark. Toomes gets rich the same way Stark did.
 
T

TAJ

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
DeathoftheEndless said:
They double-down on his hypocrisy with his hate for Tony Stark. Toomes gets rich the same way Stark did.
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That's what he meant by needing to change.
The main difference was that he stole his startup capital instead of being given it.
 
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