Thor Director Kenneth Branagh Pays Tribute To Stan Lee In Empire – Exclusive

Days before going to print on the new issue of Empire, available on newsstands and online now{ =nofollow}, the sad news came in that Stan Lee had passed away. The Marvel maestro was a true pop cultural icon – someone who changed the storytelling from comics to cinema and beyond. And, of course, he graced the big screen several times over the years in his frequent Marvel cameos – from giving Thor a haircut in Ragnarok, to delivering Fed-Ex parcels to ‘Tony Stank’, and stretching back to his wordless role as ‘Hot Dog Vendor’ in the first X-Men.

As Empire pulled together a 22-page tribute to Stan The Man, we asked Thor director Kenneth Branagh to recall his experiences of working with Lee around the making of the film . What he wrote was yet more proof of the wit, joy and unique vitality of a true creative legend. Read an extract of Kenneth Branagh’s Stan Lee tribute below:

The life force was astonishing, his concentration electric. He answered all my questions about him and the great Kirby, his collaborator of genius, and of course we talked about what Stan’s cameo would be in the new Thor movie. He wanted something Shakespearean. I told him he could do whatever he wanted, but as one of the great American originals, we might start with that.

In the end, when it came to his role, Stan, as a crusty cowboy countryman, tried with frustration to drive a pick-up truck out of a crater, where it was attached to Thor’s hammer, Mjölnir. I figured if anyone on Earth could shift that hammer who wasn’t a mythic Norseman, it would be Stan Lee.

But even he couldn’t do it.

Instead he brought the house down with a comic one-liner — channelling W.C. Fields crossed with P.T. Barnum — and left the car.

At the end of our day of work together he gave me a hug, said I should cast him as Hamlet, and that we’d make a fortune out of a new Danish comic. I started to tell him I’d think about it, but before I could finish the sentence, he’d been swept up in a massive crowd of admirers (that day’s crowd artists). He was danced away like Fred Astaire impersonating the Pied Piper.

I assumed this day was being wiped from his mind even as we spoke, but at his car, he turned before getting in, stood tall on the footplate, above the crowds, and yelled back to me, “Hey, kid (he always called me kid), you, me and Billy Shakespeare — pretty good team, don’t you think?”

Read Branagh’s full tribute to Stan Lee, as well as Lee’s final Empire interview, his complete life story and more, in Empire’s January 2019 issue – on sale now. Buy a copy online here{ =nofollow}.

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