Avengers: Endgame directors Anthony and Joe Russo revealed the decision-making process behind inserting Marvel Comics visionary Stan Lee into the film in what would ultimately prove to be the creator’s final cameo.
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“I’m sure all the directors approach it differently, but the way we approach it is, we get the script done and then we start looking for a great area to put Stan into the movie,” Anthony told Vulture.
“And we try to make it have some narrative richness and also make it entertaining for the fans. For Winter Soldier, it’s the security guard when Cap steals his suit back. Very poignant moment in the movie. And Civil War, ‘Tony Stank.’”
On Infinity War, where Lee played an unfazed driver of the bus Peter Parker (Tom Holland) leaps from when swinging into action as Spider-Man, the cameo is a “perfect Stan Lee moment,” Joe said.
“And then, a very poignant last appearance, which is set in the past,” Anthony said. “And we aged him down for it. Y’know, got some pictures of Stan from the ’70s.”
Lee’s appearances are not included in the script stage and instead come “usually afterward,” Joe said. “We’ll spend a couple hours going, ‘Okay, where does Stan go in the movie?’”
“The development process is like painted layers. It’s definitely one of the last layers,” Anthony explained.
Added Joe, “The example of the bus driver: We knew in Infinity War, once it left Earth, Stan was not gonna fit in the film. Because the story lines became hermetic at that point; you’re in space.”
Stan, Anthony quipped, is “probably not gonna be hanging out in Wakanda.”
“The tone shifted,” Joe said. “You also have to put him in a place in the movie where the tone can behave in a certain manner where it can accept the cameo. And that was the part of the movie that could hold the cameo.”
Lee’s cameo, where he appears during a 1970-set sequence in New Jersey as a fast-driving hippie who yells “Make love, not war,” was filmed in summer 2018. Months later, in November, Lee would be dead at the age of 95.
On shooting with a Lee near the end of his life, Anthony said, “The difference between him on Winter Soldier, which was our first cameo with him, to Endgame, was quite remarkable. On Winter Soldier, he came on set and the energy he had was amazing and so inspiring. You could see how excited he was to be there. He was talking to everybody. He had quips. And everybody … It was like a magnetic personality.”
“Pavlovian. You hear his voice and you’re a kid again. It does it to everybody,” Joe added.
“For some reason, every time we shoot his cameo, there are like twice as many people on set as are supposed to be there,” Anthony said. “It’s very, very funny.”
Lee, a natural showman and the star of the show, aimed for more lines when he appeared as a screwed security guard in 2014’s Winter Soldier.
“The other thing we loved about him, which kinda confused us on Winter Soldier, was that he just wanted more lines,” Anthony said.
“So we had the shot set up for him and he had a very simple line, but he kept throwing in other lines. At first it was like, Joe and I because we have so much respect and reverence for him, we’re just like — it was hard for us. But at the end of the day, we had to sorta focus it. But to see the fact that he had that level of passion and enthusiasm, where he just wanted to keep going and he wanted more, he just wanted to find more and more, that was amazing. By Endgame, though, his age was taking a toll on him and he was well enough to do it, but that’s about it.”
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Image Credit: Marvel Studios
