Stan Lee’s 25 greatest on screen Marvel cameos
In honor of Stan the Man's centennial, here are his best on-camera cameos, from The Trial Of The Incredible Hulk to Avengers: Endgame
Film Features Stan Lee
By the final decades of his long and legendary life, Stan Lee was perhaps less well known among the public as a comic book writer and better known as a kind of evangelist for all things Marvel, executive producing countless projects on the big and small screens and serving as the company’s unofficial mascot. Around the turn of the millennium, as Marvel’s leap to the big screen grew and grew, so too did Stan’s profile through a series of well-received, increasingly creative cameo appearances.
Dozens of Marvel movies, TV shows, animated series, and even video games eventually included glimpses of Lee, but some still stand out as especially unforgettable. So, in honor of Stan the Man on what would have been his 100th birthday, here are 25 of his best cameos, presented in chronological order.
45 Comments
Mallrats should have gotten an honorable mention.
Is it the Captain Marvel cameo where he has the script to Mallrats?
That’s right. Kevin Smith said that after Stan’s death, Feige reached out to him to see if he had outtakes of that scene, since Stan’s voice wasn’t great at the time. He didn’t but he pointed Feige to Universal, who did.
And Teen Titans Go To The Movies! You have to give Lee credit for doing a cameo (well, voicing the animated version of himself anyway) in a DC movie! The whole point of the cameo was to mock his Marvel cameos and he was a good enough sport to do it (well, I’m sure they paid him, but still).
I’ll let them off the hook as it’s not a cameo it is an actual performance and a damned good one. For me it is his greatest on screen performance and I’ll always smile when I see the Captain Marvel cameo that nodded to it.
Isn’t that basically the only time he appeared on film and it wasn’t a cameo?
I’d give an honorable mention to the Insomniac game Marvel’s Spider-Man. I played the game shortly after his death, and this sweet, touching scene hit me like a gut punch.
i was looking for this one. i’m glad you mentioned it, as it’s probably my favourite of his later cameos.
Agree. I wasn’t expecting it and then bam, there’s Stan Lee! One of two tears shed while playing that game.
Tony Stank?
sounds like a rapper.
Tony Stank
Okay, I’ll play your little game:The one with Ferrigno should have been much higher, as that was a really nice nod. The one in Ultron was a personal favorite. But I’ve always been annoyed at how the Endgame cameo is screwed up: the car is shown driving in with the passenger side toward the gate, but Lee’s character is facing the gate when he yells out.
I wasn’t a fan of the Endgame cameo. I really with they had done something just a few seconds longer. It felt so rushed.
It’s not a ranked list, the 25 that made it in are just in chronological order.
Fair enough. My other comments still apply.
One of Lee’s most poignant cameos, if not the most poignant of his career, arrived in Sony’s Oscar-winning animated journey into Spider-Man in all his many forms.It was the most poignant, because Spider-Verse released in theaters less than a month after Stan passed. (The article’s not wrong when it says Captain Marvel was the first MCU cameo released posthumously, but it’s misleading to say the least.) In the theater, I didn’t know that moment was coming; I still get a bit misty-eyed just thinking about it.
I think you missed slightly on what made the Captain Marvel one so great. He is on the bus and she’s looking for the Skrull. She pulls the script for Mallrats down and sees him. Now, keep in mind, they had just done the tired trope of dumb man telling woman to smile about 5 years after that warranty had expired. Carol is grumping around Earth, trying to complete her mission.She realizes Stan isn’t her guy and then smiles at him. As if to say, “Yeah, this one is OK.”
You didn’t list his cameo in Big Hero 6, which was also based on a Marvel property.
The Big Hero 6 cameo would easily be a contender for his best one.
Yes! His voice role in Big Hero 6 was the best.
They’re all great, but this one is my favorite
It’s AVClub so I suppose omitting the cameo in The Gifted TV series is to be expected.
Small side character observing and commenting on all the important action like an audience surrogate… appearing in various different comics properties to gird the illusion that the separate adventures are facets of a cohesive singular universe…In the MCU, Stan Lee IS Rick Jones!
I’m partial to his ‘90s cartoon appearance with a hilarious nod towards his wife Joan voicing Madame Web when he kinda hits on her.
I like the one with the smoking jacket and the attendant honeys.
Lookin’ good, Hef.
Admittedly it may have to do with Spiderverse being my favorite superhero film thus far, but that cameo, even being animated, hits in a way the others just don’t for me. At least not to the same degree.
Civil War was the worst cameo by far. Rhodey and Tony, the first friends in the MCU and two of it’s earliest characters, are having a heart to heart about Rhodey’s injuries(really the only real harm that came to any established character in this “war”) and it’s interrupted by Tony Stank? Absolute garbage.
Didn’t bother me in that instance. The tender moment was basically over anyway.
If anything it drives it home a bit more that Rhodey will still be Rhodey and he got to enjoy a nice laugh at this friend’s expense.
Yeah often mcu movies will step on a tender moment with a laugh but this isn’t an example of that.
Slow news week?
Just take a look at the Homecoming one again – the guy with the boombox is Kirk Thatcher, who played ‘Punk on the Bus’ in Star Trek IV.
The director has said it’s the same character, thus the MCU and the Star Trek universe are THE SAME UNIVERSE.
How cool is that?
The alternate takes of his Ant-Man & the Wasp scene are pretty great.
His cameo in The Runaways is one of my favorites, because it’s the only one I didn’t expect.
Shit, now I actually want to watch that show!
It’s very underrated.
The Endgame one is rather poignant, if only because his license plate sez NUFF SAID
I work at fedex. We have a board with photos of some of our trainers. I printed a shot of Stan in Civil War and it was up there for months before the boss noticed. She eventually saw it and decided to leave it.That pic should hang in every fedex in the country.
I half wanted him to show up in PUNISHER: WAR ZONE dressed as a plumber in the mob mansion and he goes “Hello, I’m here to fix the–” then he’s shot 300 times.
Here’s a fun relic from TV’s yesteryear that may be the oldest Stan Lee cameo. In 1971 Stan Lee (along with two imposters) appeared on the gameshow To Tell The Truth. Can the panel’s pointed questions tell the true Marvel editor from the two imposters? Watch and find out!
Personally I’m a fan of his apperance in Teen Titans Go to the Movies because he even acknowledges his presence makes no sense.
And who could forget the one-two punch Stan Lee and Frank Miller cameo team up in Jugular Wine: A Vampire Odyssey?