Stan Lee revealed his favourite superhero movie
Any great Marvel movie has always been indebted to the work of Stan Lee. From the earliest forays into big screen adaptations to the billion-dollar industry that has come with the start of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, every character has always stemmed from Lee’s work with Steve Ditko and being able to make stories about extraordinary people feel real to millions of readers in comic books. While Lee has since passed on, he once revealed what he considered to be one of the best superhero movies ever made.
Before being a mainstream product, most film studios treated the superhero movie as either box-office poison or a novelty item. Regardless of the massive appeal of comic books, the early days of Adam West as Batman left the genre feeling hollow, only played for cheap laughs when seen on the silver screen.
After Richard Donner’s Superman, though, audiences got a look at the power that comes with a superhero movie outside of just the spectacle onscreen. With the release of Michael Keaton’s Batman following almost a decade afterwards, Marvel’s first forays didn’t fare nearly as well, including one of the more egregious versions of Captain America being released in the 1990s.
Towards the end of the 20th century, though, the superhero medium started to go out of style yet again, becoming a parody of itself by the time studios were working with actors like George Clooney to bring Batman and Robin to life. It was time for a switch-up for the genre to bring everything back to basics. Enter horror icon Sam Raimi.
After becoming one of the biggest indie filmmakers with the Evil Dead franchise, Raimi was a lifelong fan of Spider-Man and wanted to translate his version of the character on the big screen. Despite the reputation of superhero movies at the time, Spider-Man was a major box office smash, having a unique balance of pulse-pounding action, sentimental moments, and a brilliant portrayal by Tobey Maguire as the web-slinger.
When asked about the movie later, Lee said on Facebook that he considered Spider-Man his favourite film because it “was the first one that was such a hit”. From the moment Raimi’s version garnered success, it opened the door for even more blockbuster comic book movies, with X-Men arriving around the same time and introducing the film world to mutants played by Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry.
Maguire’s iteration of Peter Parker also marked the start of a trend in nearly every Marvel movie. During a fight scene in the movie where Spider-Man faces off against The Gren Goblin, some building rubble is dislodged and falls towards the street below, where Stan Lee appears to push a woman out of the way.
This practice would become commonplace throughout every subsequent Marvel film, with Lee having bit roles in every single Marvel movie, either there to deliver a non-sequitur or provide a subtle Easter Egg for fans of the heroes. Capping off with his appearance in Avengers: Endgame shortly before his death, each post-Spider-Man film serves as an enduring reminder of the power of the stories Lee helped bring to life on the page.
