Monday 18 March 2024

X-Men (4½ Stars)


After Stan Lee's death I rewatched all of the Marvel films in which he appears, from "Spider-Man" to "Captain Marvel". For reasons unknown to me I omitted the X-Men films. I'll make up for it now.

Chronologically, "X-Men" was his first cameo. It was also his most subtle cameo. He appears without speaking for about ten seconds as a hot dog vendor on the beach. Of all his cameos, this is the easiest to miss. As the films progressed, his cameo roles became bigger and more prominent.

One criticism I have is that the film seems to have been made for comic book fans. What I mean is, many characters are barely introduced. I have a question to my readers. Are you someone who had never read the X-Men comics? If so, did you understand the film?

Success Rate:  + 2.0

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3 comments:

  1. If you're looking to watch all of Stan's movie cameos, what about his TV Movie appearances? Like way back in The Trial Of The Incredible Hulk we saw (and heard) Stan playing the Jury Foreman.

    But when i'm in the mood for Stan Lee i often go to the toons. He had some much larger roles there. Like and ongoing role as the janitor at Peter's school in Ultimate Spider-Man. (He was also a SHIELD agent and ready to face any crisis with a mop as either tool or weapon as needed)
    Hulk And The Agents Of SMASH had Stan as a series regular playing the Mayor of Vista Verde, the little desert town near their New Mexico base. I like that role especially since playing a politician gave good excuse for bombastic pontification.
    Both characters are named Stan, of course.

    Regarding the X-Men movie question - I was reading them starting back in the '60s. so i'm excluded from the survey sample.


    Lots of catching up on the blog to do again. Our modern plague finally caught me and knocked me down hard for a few weeks, and the following few months seemed dedicated to making up for how generally pleasant my life had been. But most has been sorted now, and slowly getting back into more things than just working on T3C.

    I might even get back to watching the last few seasons of Smallville soon.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks. I'm only interested in Stan's cameos in Marvel films. I don't have access to most of his non-Marvel cameos.

      My blogging has slowed down at the moment, as you must have noticed. Not just my blogging, I've hardly been watching films. I have relatives visiting from England who are keeping me busy. Don't worry, I'll be back.

      You had Corona? Please tell me as much as possible. Were you vaccinated? What were your symptoms? How old are you (if that's not a secret)?

      I've lost my momentum with Smallville. I want to start again, but I don't know when I'll get round to it. I'm giving films priority.

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  2. I presume you mean Marvel Theatrical Cameos for Stan, as opposed to Marvel TV Cameos as i was talking about. I've got more access there.

    You're still doing better than me in general. My site for The Third Colony is keeping up these days, but that's only because working on it was keeping me from stressing about other things. But it did get real quiet there while i was down sick.

    I was double vaxxed, but no boosters. So it hit pretty hard, but not as hard as it might have, which was a good thing. I refer to myself as a Cave-Dwelling Hermit at times, and that's usually a pretty good thing for me. But when i got sick, that means for the first few days i was just lying in bed, eating and drinking almost nothing and only crawling out from under the covers to go to the bathroom. Symptoms were mostly just fever and body aches with lots and lots and lots of coughing. I had a vomit bucket by the bed, but it was just used for coughing up pints of phlegm.
    I should have been hospitalized during that period, if for no other reason than to have had a drip to keep my system from dehydrating so savagely. And to get some nutrients into the system. By the time the symptoms began to subside, my body was terribly depleted and i was having trouble eating much of anything. I wound up getting heavily into fruit juices and things like apple sauce that i could just put in my mouth and swallow a bit.

    Oh, right. You wanted my age group, too. Old enough to sing "When I WAS 64..." instead. But only by a few years.

    That's been exactly my problem. I lost my momentum on Smallville while i was down sick and haven't herded my brain back around that way to start it up again yet. For some odd reason while i was recovering i wound up watching all of the Stargate series instead - SG1, Atlantis, & Universe. That's 17 seasons totalled. There were weeks where all i was doing was sitting and staring at the screen most of the day. Forgot a symptom up there. What they call Brain Fog turns out to be pretty thick. I was in kind of a daze for a long time, and couldn't focus to create anything - just zombie watch. But i finally sparked on a scenario about a murder & decaptitation storyline for T3C that could be played from two different viewpoint by two of the Player Character options for the game that would bring a lot of different elements together. That started the fires burning again. I was damn thankful for that as it burned off the brain fog and i seem to be back pretty close to what passes for normal around here.

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