Did you see Teen Titans GO! To The Movies this summer? Nope? Well, you missed out on one of the best and funniest superhero movies there’s been in a long time. Essentially a 90 minute takedown of repetitive superhero films featuring glowering and haunted square-jawed heroes, the pic was loaded with hilarious potshots at iconic DC superheroes (including a brutal gag about Batman’s parents’ murder), a ton of DC fan service (Animal Man! On the big screen!) and a load of toe-tappin’ tunes. One thing it also boasted was a Stan Lee cameo, which was unsurprisingly his first in a DC movie.
You can check it out below, in which he takes over the screen making fun of his incredibly heavy-handed cameos in Marvel movies (and also in Marvel’s Spider-Man for PlayStation 4). His mugging for the camera only stops when someone whispers in his ear that this is a DC joint. Later in the film, this is called back to when he says he doesn’t care what publisher’s characters are in this, he just loves making cameos.
It’s a great moment, but it almost didn’t happen at all. Co-directors Peter Rida Michail and Adrian Horvath spoke to Entertainment Weekly over the summer about the process of recording it and explained:
“It was awesome, dude! We got to go to [Stan’s] office, and Aaron voice-directed him. He was just up for everything. He was very nice and very welcoming and super patient with us.”
Aaron Horvath added:
“Our audio engineer, his equipment broke, and I’ve never seen a person’s face turn so red or get so sweaty so fast. He was trying to fix the board and he couldn’t fix it. So we ended up having to record Stan on like a laptop. Our engineer was just so ashamed of himself. It was great though because Stan Lee was just busting his balls the whole time. He was awesome, man.”
It’s going to be pretty sad when Lee stops popping up in these movies. This is easily one of my favorite appearances of his, but the museum security guard in Captain America: The Winter Soldier has to be up there, too, not to mention his cameo alongside the Watchers in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. So many happy memories…