Stan Lee by Michael Buckner/Getty Images
Iron Man stomped box office sales this past summer with a powerful combination of phenomenal casting, serious special effects, tight dialogue and fast-paced action. Months later, the air may be getting crisper, but fans can relive the summer blockbuster all over again with the flick on DVD, which hits streets September 30. To usher in the arrival of the film on disc, TVGuide.com spoke with the comic's creator,
Stan Lee, to get his take on the movie, how much of him we'll see on the DVD and what we can expect from him next. Plus: Will we soon see
Iron Man: The TV Series? —
Anna DimondTVGuide.com: What did you think of the new Iron Man?
Stan Lee: I didn't think it was all that bad. [
Laughs] I thought it was great!
TVGuide.com: How involved are you in the making the films based on your characters?Lee: Practically none at all. If they think of it, they give me a cameo in the movie, which I love doing. I usually go to the premiere, where I walk down the red carpet and that's a real thrill. But that's about it.
TVGuide.com: Do have a hand in crafting your cameos?
Lee: Nope. I'm asked if I can be at a certain place, and when I get there, they tell me what to do. Now, I'll give you a little private information about my
Iron Man cameo, and obviously it was the high spot of the movie. When I was doing it, Jon Favreau, the director, gave me a line to say. But then when the movie came out, I realized he had cut the line. But I'm going to tell you, because you seem like a person who can keep a secret: Remember, I'm standing with three girls, and he [Tony Stark] comes over and taps me on the back, and he says, 'Oh, I'm sorry..,' and I turn around and say to him, 'That's OK, I get that all the time.' I hope all of this will be on the outtakes on the DVD.
TVGuide.com: Well, I hope they're on there!
Lee: Well, they've got to be. Because they're smart enough at the studio to know that that's the first thing you'll look for, 'Is Stan going to be there?' [Laughs] I'm waiting for the TV academy to have a category for 'Best Cameo,' but oh, they're so slow.
TVGuide.com: How much of an impact will the Avengers movie have on planned sequels for Iron Man?
Lee: All these things tie in together. Marvel will do the movies the way they do the comic books, where everything touches everything else and relates. The only problem is, Marvel can only do that with the characters that they themselves are producing. For example,
Spider-Man is done by Sony, and that would make it a difficult thing to put in a Marvel movie. I know that the Hulk and Iron Man, and Captain America — characters like that — they'll be able to put together with no problem. If they make it with three different superheroes, don't you think they ought to give me three different cameos?
TVGuide.com: It seems like there's been an even bigger embrace of comics in Hollywood lately, where Marvel has even become its own studio.
Lee: I think it's wonderful, and something they should have done a long time ago. Why not produce their own movies? If you can control your characters, if you know what you're doing, it's certainly better than having other people do it.
TVGuide.com: Are there ever times you feel like you would have made a different decision than was made in one of the movies?
Lee: No, as a matter of fact, any time that they disagree with what I might've done, when I see the movie, I realize they were right, which is why I try not to butt in. With Spider-Man, in the comic books, he wears a web shooter. There's web fluid in the shooter, and in the stories I wrote, he would occasionally run out of fluid. When the movie was done, it was decided to let it be like a spider. Let the webbing be organic, it comes right out of his hand. And that, I think, was a much better decision.
TVGuide.com: Could you see any of your comics become serialized TV shows again, or live-action shows?
Lee: Oh, sure. The beautiful thing is, when a character becomes popular, let's say Iron Man, it's really a matter of time. You can only work on so many things at a time. But there's no reason why there might not be an animated
Iron Man series, or a live-action television series of
Iron Man. Companies exploit these characters as much as possible. That's why everybody's looking for the next big thing.
TVGuide.com: Do you have any new "things" of your own in the works?
Lee: I've formed a new company called POW Entertainment, which I'm sure you've already guessed, stands for Purveyors of Wonder. We have a first-look deal with Walt Disney studios. We have there movies that are being developed there, and we're working on some television shows, and we're working on some animated cartoons, and some DVDs. So we're really busy and I'm having more fun.
TVGuide.com: What are some of your new characters like?
Lee: I can just give you the names. The three I'm doing for Disney are called Nick Ratchet, Blaze and Tigress. And they're all totally different from each other, but they'll all make wonderful comic books some day.
TVGuide.com: Why do you think there's such a resurgence of interest in superheroes?
Lee: I don't think there has ever been a time when people weren't interested, but it wasn't possible to do the special effects the way you can do them today. So it wasn't easy to do the movies the right way. When you have characters that are bigger than life, and do things as fantastic as these characters do, you have to be able to film them in a way that does them justice. And the technology has reached a point where you can have men flying and doing all the wonderful things they do. People have always been interested in bigger-than-life characters. Because you're not seeing the same old thing, you don't know what to expect.
TVGuide.com: But there is something unique about heroism, like the show Heroes, where ordinary people have such great powers.
Lee: The trick is, to take fantasy, and make it realistic. If you can make the characters believable and empathetic, so that the normal person watching thinks to him or herself, 'That could be me!' And then you have the fantastic element: Then you've got a perfect situation. You may take notes if you wish.
Iron Man
is out on DVD tuesday, September 30.
