Teen Titans Go! To the Movies has a good ol’ time lampooning the various tropes of the superhero movie genre – and that comedy doesn’t end with taking the DC Movie Universe down a peg. No, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the butt of a fair number of jokes – including one standout recurring gag involving Stan Lee!
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Yes, Marvel Comics co-creator Stan Lee is well known at this point for his various cameo appearances in Marvel movies. Teen Titans Go! To the Movies decides to have a little fun with that tradition by having Lee make his first DC movie appearance – or at the very least, try to.
An animated version of Lee pops up several times during Teen Titans Go! To the Movies, trying to worm his way into a cameo. However, for various comedic reasons Lee is never able to make his appearance in full: the first time he says ‘This is Stan Lee – dig my subtle cameo! This is a DC movie! I gotta get outta here!” The second time, he gets in the way while the Titans are making an escape from a mind-controlled Justice League. He even drops a signature “Excelsior!” to really hammer it home.
All in all, Teen Titans Go! To the Movies continues some strong cameos from Lee in 2018. First, he had a hilarious appearance as a casino gambler in Black Panther; he was Peter Parker’s bus driver in Avengers: Infinity War; an ex-hippie having a serious flashback in Ant-Man and the Wasp; and now this Teen Titans appearance, where he mocks his own propensity for hamming it up in cameos. (That’s not even counting his likeness appearing in Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Cloak and Dagger as well, this year.) Ironically enough, the biggest box office earner (Infinity War) happens to be the weakest cameo of the bunch, but all of the above were much better moments for he icon as opposed to real life.
Lee recently expressed his excitement at Disney acquiring 21st Century Fox’s Marvel properties, and has been generally in better spirits as of late. The first half 2018 saw his personal life plagued by controversy, as Lee had a very public and ugly falling out with his former manager Keya Morgan. That feud involved Lee fighting for control of his own likeness and getting into legal dispute with his former company POW! Entertainment, and even an altercation with two gunman at Lee’s Hollywood home, allegedly under the direction of Morgan. However, after continuous reports of Lee being the victim of an extensive elder abuse plot, his friend and former lawyer Tom Lallas has been appointed “guardian ad litem,” giving him oversight and protection over Lee’s finances.
Teen Titans Go! To the Movies (featuring Stan Lee) is now in theaters.
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Image Courtesy of Warner Bros.
