If you’ve seen a
movie based on a Marvel comic, odds are you’ve seen the old guy with the
mustache and, more often than not, sunglasses. He shows up and says something
funny and then disappears, only to show up in the next film as a different
character with a different funny thing to say. This is Stan Lee, comic
superstar and co-creator of Spider-Man, the X-Men, Iron Man, and pretty much
every other Marvel superhero that dates back to the 1960s and 70s. As a
prominent pop culture icon, Stan was one of the most vocal advocates of the
power of comic books up until his death in 2018, and now, five years later, we
get a chance to know the man himself with Disney+’s Stan Lee, an
entertaining if somewhat perfunctory documentary that is more honest than I was
expecting, if still a bit sanitized and white washed.
Stan himself narrates the documentary via a mixture of archived interview
soundbites which naturally gives rise to questions about objectivity. Stan
Lee isn’t an in-depth tell-all put together by impartial researchers,
but instead feels like sitting down to listen to your grandpa as he talks about
his life as he remembers it. One must also remember that, with all due respect
to his legacy and legitimate creativity, business acumen, and general
ingenuity, Stan was not afraid to take the spotlight in his day. Indeed, he
often relished it. So while Stan Lee does touch on the main
events and touchstones in the Marvelous Maestro’s life, one cannot help but
feel like some things are being left out or misrepresented, whether
intentionally or unintentionally.
That being said, there were a couple of moments that surprised me with their
honesty. Stan and his equally legendary collaborators Jack Kirby and Steve
Ditko famously had fallings out over who deserved credit for what creations,
and Stan Lee does not shy away from this conflict, nor does it choose
sides and declare that one party was right and the other party was wrong. It is
true that Kirby and Ditko are very much out of focus in this documentary, but
one must remember that this is a documentary about Stan Lee, not Jack Kirby or
Steve Ditko. It is also not a documentary about Marvel Comics itself; once Stan
essentially retires the film jumps from the late 70s to 2010, leaving a lot of
history unexplored (on the plus side, this means the documentary never turns
into an advertisement for the Marvel or Disney, which I must admit I was
concerned was a possibility). If there’s one thing I can fault Stan Lee for
other than the predominant lack of objectivity it’s this: We never really get
into any real depth, instead opting to jump from heading to heading on the Stan
Lee Wikipedia page.
Don’t get me wrong, Stan Lee is still an entertaining
documentary that does have a lot of truth to it. One should just make sure to
approach things with that ever-important grain of salt.
Stan Lee is now available on Disney+.
This review was first published in the Keizertimes on September
15th, 2023. Visit at www.keizertimes.com/
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