Sam Raimi did not really want Stan Lee to be a cameo in Spider-Man

It's been two days since the legend of Marvel Comics passed away, and with many fans paying tribute to the creator, those who knew him personally also shared anecdotes about their experiences with humans. Take Sam Raimi, director of 2002 Spider Man. At that time, Lee was not yet known as the King Cameo. Also, when Raimi was asked to include Lee in the first Web-Slinger movie, he was not part of it. As Raimi recalled:

As Sam Raimi had already told THR, he had already met Stan Lee before working on Spider Man. After Raimi's Darkman came out, Lee called the director and told him that he liked the movie. The two men then met for lunch and Lee told Raimi that he wanted to work with him on a Thor movie. The men wrote some treatments and played for 20th Century Fox, but as it was in 1991, a decade before the genre of the superhero movie really took off, the studio did not care to the project. But in the time that Raimi spent with Lee, he realized that the author, the editor and the comic book editor simply did not have the chops by interim.

However, due to pressure from producer Avi Arad, Sam Raimi had to include Stan Lee in Spider Man anyway, and it finally worked for Raimi and the public. Lee appears briefly in the film to dismiss another spectator before being crushed by debris, as you can see below.

Sam Raimi ended up bringing back Stan Lee to Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3 In addition, the first saw Lee save another civilian and the latter saw him interviewing Peter Parker of Tobey Maguire. Lee would later be brought back for cameo in The amazing spider-man, The amazing Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man: Homecoming, some of the many Marvel films in which he appeared.

Note that even before Spider ManStan Lee already had some cameos to his credit, not to mention X Menwhere he was one of the passers-by on the beach who saw Senator Kelly come out of the water. His first appearance in the image of Marvel is in the TV movie of 1989 The trial of the incredible Hulkand outside the Marvel sphere, he had a minor but important role in Kevin Smith's. Mallrats.

In addition to being a critical and commercial success, Spider Man was one of the first films to popularize the cinematic superheroes of the modern era. So without his appearances there and in X Menit is unlikely that Lee's CV was as complete as it was finished. Although Lee has passed, he has several posthumous cameos to come, including Spider-Man: in the Spider-Verse and Avengers 4.