By Gill Pringle
Obviously you’ve been in this type of genre before where you had to wear a mask, how does this feel different?
Quite a bit mostly because of technology I think. How you can do things now it’s just so different. The stuff gets done for you, that’s the biggest thing I’ve noticed.
As an actor to step into Vulture’s wings so to speak. What makes him interesting for you?
I think without giving too much away, it’s an interesting and I think gutsy approach by Jon. He’s a working class guy who has built himself up a great business. A dad, I’ve never seen that and it’s not what I’d call a classic villain. More interesting villain, I think.
Did you ever consider not taking the role because of the similarities with Birdman?
I honestly never thought about it. I don’t think about this stuff a lot. I think ya’ll think about it more that I think about it. At first I couldn’t do it because of the scheduling situation of it. The movie I was doing called The Founder, I needed to be available for that. Then I’m doing another movie called American Assassin, and I thought it’s just not going to work out because I was going to be promoting The Founder and then Harvey Weinstein’s company moved it to December, I guess you do that for awards consideration. So that got me freed up a little bit. But I thought it was a moot point. I told them my schedule has changed, I don’t know when you’re shooting it but maybe it will work, and it worked out. I was glad it did, it was really fun, really good group of people. And this kid Tom is fantastic, he’s a really really good kid and he’s really good in this, good actor.
Do you have a lot of stunts yourself?
Yeah but not as many as I think Tom… because I’m not in it as much as Tom… but I actually brought the guy who had done a little bit of stunts for me in Birdman because he’s so skilled so I recommended him and he’s so good at this stuff. He’s doing the front part of this today and then I’m doing some of this, not like Batman…
How long does it take you to get into the suit?
The suit’s not that big a deal because I don’t get into it that often. When a movie is this big and you have to do it x amount of times, it’s a lot more practical to shoot two or three units. So a lot of this stuff is shot while I’m shooting another scene and I’m not always in it and they only had me for a limited amount of time because I actually had to go do this other movie. So they are trying to jam me in as much as they can because that’s the only way they could’ve done it because I had to go make this other movie.
There’s a love story with your character, and his motivations are perhaps understandable. Do you understand him as a bad guy or do you sympathise with him?
I think it’s a really good approach. Really smart and I’m not sure how much of this is in the comic book background history of this character. I don’t know how detailed it is in terms of his background. But I think it’s kind of an interesting and coincidentally timely approach. This guy who’s struggling to make it, to kind of just get by and kind of feels like he’s one of the have-nots and he’s working hard and he deserves more. He deserves a bigger piece of the pie.
Did you read any of the original comics?
No. I always think I got a lot of things to do in my life.
What makes these characters interesting to us? They are not in the world we exist in. Is it a leap of faith, is it a fantasy?
I have no idea. Honestly I have no idea. It’s a good question. It must be something… escapism… I dunno…
Can you talk about the director, Jon Watts?
Really good, really smart. I think he just sees the bigger picture because these things are really difficult to pull off. It’s hard to tell a smaller story [within these big movies]… and also he’s got the burden of having to stay true to what’s in the lore. It has to be accurate and creative at the same time. You can only move things around, I would think, a little bit without destroying the background of these characters. In his head, he has to see a lot of things and fit them in and of course they storyboard all of it and they have this thing called PreVis which is this amazing technology that was not around during Batman. So you can kind of see it played out a little bit. But you can only do so much of that, so he’s really bright and he’s got a great sense of humour. I think his approach is really fresh. When we were doing Batman, I had my ideas of who this guy was based on only the Frank Miller version of what Tim sent me to read. So I read the Frank Miller stuff and I read the script and I had my own interpretation of it that came from that. I would have ideas, stuff that was never in the script, just to build up my interpretation of who he was and how he was. It’s interesting that all this stuff is in there and you’ve got to stay true to it.
Your character is all about the technology.
What’s cool is that he’s not though. He starts out as this scavenger, he goes out and gets things just to sell, get by just to make a living and he builds it into a business. He probably says to the Tinkerer “I need X, I need X to do Y” and he’ll say okay, let me go to work on it. And he’ll create things for him. So the technology I think comes later. Its more handmade, I think the technology is what Spider-Man has.
It’s been 30 years since you did your first comic book movie, has it a changed a lot?
I don’t know anything about this stuff, I just show up and I do my work…. I find it interesting, when they show me how it works and what we are doing. Even this room, is really amazing, it’s really amazing. But I don’t know anything about it until I get here or if I have to do the work ahead of time. And that works no different than before I started doing this for a living. I just talk to the director and say this is what I am thinking. I want to know his background. I ask him the questions and give him my opinion. It’s really the same stuff. What happens once I get here, I’m naive about it. I just show up.
How timely is this story, do you think?
It’s timely however you want to interpret it. I’ll tell you this, what you have to factor in everything I have told you here today, I am the least knowledgeable person about this. I’m not even sure… after the Joker I don’t really know who anybody is. But I really value it in terms of the art and craft of it. So I’m kind of learning as I go because I’m kind of forced to. The way you play a certain scene or something has to be true to the history of all this stuff and so what I put together after discussing this with everybody – the producers and people who know way more about this than I do – is just that how good the Marvel folks are, how thorough they are at everything, detail oriented. In almost every movie there is going to be layers to a scene, and these guys are cognisant of that. When you think about the quality of the actors they hire…. not me… but you look back on these guys like Jeff Bridges… national treasure if you ask me, so they are thinking about all that stuff. I’m new at this, I’m not being coy; you’re asking a guy who is new to this environment.
But your guy is not crazy, he was pushed into the situation?
You can look at it how you want. He is a legitimate victim but maybe a personality type that sees himself as being victimised.
Spider-Man: Homecoming is in cinemas July 6, 2017
