Let’s get this upfront: this article contains spoilers for a non-essential, but entirely delightful, moment in Captain Marvel – especially for those with a penchant for 90s pop-culture slacker comedies. If you’ve seen the film, read on. If not, you may want to return after you catch the MCU’s latest outing.
Still here? Good – let’s talk about that Stan Lee cameo. No, not the lovely pre-film tribute, but the main cameo which arrives early on in the film’s Earth-bound segment. After crashing down on C-53, Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel chases an escaped Skull through Los Angeles on a train. Also on public transport that day? None other than Stan Lee himself, reading the script for Kevin Smith’s 1995 Gen X comedy Mallrats, in which Lee made one of his first major on-screen appearances. Needless to say the filmmaker, who became friends with Lee after the Mallrats shoot, was overwhelmed by the reference, and uploaded a video sharing his reaction. This being Smith, it’s full of fruity language – so be warned.
“I went apeshit. I was just profoundly moved,” he explains. “To be sitting there […] and to see my friend, who’s no longer with us, in a cameo is thrilling enough. To see that cameo, in which Stan was playing himself getting ready to be in my movie back in 1995, was like…” Cue the tears. Smith revealed that the cameo was filmed not long before Lee’s death, and that MCU boss Kevin Feige phoned him after Lee passed away to inform him of the cameo content, and to request access to unused line readings from the Mallrats shoot in 1995 to overdub the cameo and improve its audio quality. “I cried on the phone with him, like, ‘Are you fucking shitting me?’” says Smith. “That, referencing me, in a Marvel movie? These fucking movies mean so much to me, it’s nuts. It really is. It’s probably fucking sad how much they mean to me. To see Stan sitting there on the train rehearsing for the flick I made 24 fucking years ago, man […] It was everything.
“Years ago, because I’d always loved him and thought he was so cool, I put Stan Lee in a movie. And then 24 years later, he returned the favour. […] Thank you Marvel, and thank you Stan.”
Want more behind-the-scenes info on Captain Marvel? The Empire Podcast had a no-holds-barred chat with its writer-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck for a Spoiler Special episode which you can listen to here – and here are 15 spoiler-filled facts they told us about during the interview.
Kevin Smith is currently shooting Jay And Silent Bob Reboot, a sequel to 2001’s Strike Back and 2006’s Clerks II, which follows the stoner duo as they return to Hollywood to stop a Bluntman and Chronic remake from going ahead.
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