Stan Lee is best known for creating some of the biggest names in the history of comics, but these days he spends a lot of time filming cameos in the movies based on those characters. He's done so many of them already, but apparently, the best is yet to come. Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige recently spoke about the last batch of scenes that Lee filmed and he says that one of them is possibly the best he's ever done. According to Feige...
Most recently he flew to Atlanta and shot four cameos in one day for upcoming projects, one of which I think is maybe the best one we've ever done. It's a high bar for Stan.
It's unclear from Kevin Feige's comment to the Maltin on Movies podcast exactly how "recently" we're talking. Is this the same set of four scenes that Feige talked about several months ago or a new batch that took place since then? We could be talking about entirely different films that might contain Stan Lee's best scene so far.
There's also the question of what Kevin Feige means by "best." We assume he's saying "funniest" as Stan Lee's cameos are generally played for laughs. He's certainly had some great ones. From showing up as a strip club DJ in Deadpool to playing a World War II veteran who gets drunk under the table by Thor in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Stan Lee has had some great cameo moments. The fact that an upcoming scene is even in the running to be the best tells us we have a good one on the way.
The odds are that the scene that Kevin Feige is referring to is in one of three Marvel films set to come out this year. We've got Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and Thor: Ragnarok all on the schedule. Of course, since Stan Lee is filming his scenes in batches he's clearly not doing it alongside the movie's actual shooting schedule. He could have already filmed a cameo for Avengers 4 if Marvel knows what it is the script wants him to do.
Stan Lee cameos started as a fun little nod to the creator of so many of Marvel's great comic book characters but over the years they've become something unto themselves. People who didn't know who Stan Lee was back when the first X-Men and Spider-Man movies were being made now keep their eyes open for Lee to pop up at any given moment. While he hasn't shown up in every Marvel movie, it sounds like he's pretty well locked in for the foreseeable future.
We'll certainly be keeping our eyes open for Stan The Man as Marvel's big 2017 starts up in about a month with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2. You can check out the full list of upcoming Marvel release dates here.
