Title: With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story
Studios: 1821 Pictures, Emerging Entertainment, Epix, in association with POW! Entertainment
Distributor: FilmBuff and MPI Media Group
Released: 2012
Rated: NR
Genre: Documentary
Directed By: Terry Dougas, Nikki Frakes, and William Lawrence Hess
Cast:
Stan Lee
Joan Lee
…and about a hundred other comic luminaries and celebrities
One needn’t be a diehard comic book reader nor line up for the opening to every Marvel related film to know the name Stan Lee. As opposed to his mainly forgotten comic book creative brethren Lee has, and no doubt, always will be front and center as more and more of his creations (or co-creations) continue to power a multibillion dollar genre of film. Now the story of Lee’s rise to pop culture icon status is told in With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story.
In watching the eighty minute documentary I was mainly struck by two things: how truly affable Lee seems to be just about all of the time and how we get to see a very personal look at Stan and his wife Joan. I was expecting a telling of Stan’s rise to fame and glory told through the usual assortment of celebrities and comic book compatriots as we’ve normally come to expect from docs like this but the addition of scenes of Lee’s home life as well as very frankly personal revelations from Stan and Joan make this more than just an extended informercial for Stan Lee and his current company POW! Entertainment. I never expected a look at the life of a comic book creator to go in this sort of a direction and it’s interesting to see the Lees bicker – one gets the feeling there’s a lot of good natured playing for the upper hand in this household – and watching them dance to The Girl from Ipanema is a shyly sweet moment in the film. On a side note, you may think you don’t know that song but if you’ve ever waited in a dentist’s office or ridden elevators I’m certain it’s burned into your brain cells for all time…
While some aspects of his past come across as a little less than completely factual in his own words (how he was hired at Timely Comics, the reason behind changing his name, his roller coaster relationships with Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, and the fiasco which was Stan Lee Media are a few examples) I’m willing to cut Lee a lot of slack because by this time many of the facts – outside of those surrounding Stan Lee Media – seemingly no longer have any great importance in the great scheme of things. In these respects one almost has the impression Lee has concocted small fictions more in keeping with his upbeat outlook on life as opposed to trying to obscure the truth. Hell, as he nears his 90th birthday Lee can recall the Golden and Silver Age of comics however he’d like as he’s one of our few remaining sources of information. Just so you know, I certainly recommend reading David Hadju’s The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America for a well done retelling of the tail end of that period we like to call the Golden Age of comics as well as the witch hunt against comic books in the 1950’s.
Yeah… I read comics as a well little kid – granted this was the early 1970s – and I know they led me down the path to juvenile delinquency… NOT!
Directors Terry Dougas, Nikki Frakes, and William Lawrence Hess don’t set out to make a dark and brooding documentary about Lee’s life – as if that would even be possible – and the film clips along very nicely, for the most part, with plenty of discussion of the rise of Marvel (known as Atlas at the beginning of it’s emergence) and the creation of the four color characters we know and love. Longtime fans of Marvel might find some of the material tackled is old hat but for the casual viewer, those who line up to see Captain America or The Avengers but might not necessarily swing over to the local comic shop every Wednesday to empty their pull box, will find a lot of bases covered in a relatively short span. I’ll mention some of the celebrity sound bites do wear on the nerves a little as some give the impression they’re just looking for a little face time but, thankfully, more time is devoted to Stan and Joan’s words and of those who were in the know (Dick Ayers, Roy Thomas, the late greats Joe Simon and Gene Conlan to name a few) as opposed to actors who simply appeared in movies based on the Marvel properties. Ok… I know Nic Cage is a huge comic fan so I’m not busting his chops!
It was also nice to hear more than a second or two devoted to the king, Jack Kirby, than one might expect in a documentary devoted to Stan Lee. I know the relationship between Lee and Kirby wasn’t as rosy as portrayed in the film, or by Lee’s own description of their partnership, yet Kirby could be extremely difficult as well – I suppose you would be too if it seemed as if every comic company you worked for eventually seemed hellbent on shafting you – and I almost had a feeling the inclusion of the Kirby material (he’s almost a co-star) was almost an acknowledgement Marvel kind of stuck it to him and Kirby deserved better. I have no doubt Lee really wishes Jack was still around to bask in the success of so many characters who have now gone on to become icons the world over.
As for the video quality, some nice graphic work is done with many of the old photographs from the period and classic comic images are animated to some extent – some much better than others – but while an attempt is made to “liven” these static images up I have to say much of the television video is very poorly reproduced in the film. I can understand some of this but when even the C-Span video of Lee receiving the National Medal of Arts in 2008 is grainy then there’s a problem. I certainly understand possibly not being able to obtain pristine video but the transitions from the film the directors shot to the archival footage is very jarring and much of the quality is worse than what you might expect to see in the poorest YouTube video; if I can track down clearer footage in a few minutes of searching the web I would have to expect the same from the film makers.
You may be thinking I didn’t enjoy With Great Power but that would be far from the truth. Is it a technically perfect documentary? No. Do some portions of the film seem overly superficial? Yes. Yet the star of the show is Stan Lee himself and the one thing Mr. Lee has dedicated his life to, since the early 1940s, is to entertain and he certainly pulls this off with aplomb throughout the movie. There is only one Stan Lee and I know plenty of thirty and forty-somethings who need a big jolt of the same sort of energy it appears invigorates this creator day in and day out.
The film makers make a smart, and I might say bold, decision to include footage of Stan and Joan at home as well as their discussions of touchy subjects such as losing their days old infant Jan, Joan’s subsequent decision to have her tubes severed, and the couple’s struggles to adopt during a period where religiously mixed marriages were a death knell for adoption. These might not be the sorts of topics the average sixteen year old comic store patron will be drawn to but the inclusion of these revelations not only brings a more human element to Lee’s story, as opposed to simply devoting nearly an hour and a half of only singing Lee’s praises, but also provides an inkling of insight into why the Marvel characters have resonated with readers for over fifty years; these comic book tales weren’t concocted through marketing research or public consensus but written by a very real human being who experienced pain, loss and heartbreak not only as his characters do but in the same way which every one of us have as well. At the end of the day Lee’s creations draw us in because we’re all members of the X-Men, we are The Hulk, we are Spider-Man. Or, in other words, we dig the Marvel characters because under the mask they reflect who we are and the struggle we face and not for the amazing powers they possess. This is something which resonated in the early 1960s and still does to this day.
If you’re a fan of the Marvel universe, enjoy the current success of the Marvel properties on film, like comics in general or even just the creative process in itself you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of With Great Power. The film depicts a man, who through the power of imagination and perseverance, brings joy to millions in what I’d consider in much the same way Walt Disney did. Not only is the documentary overall breezy and fun, it’s also an inspiration for anyone with an imaginative spark to go out there and give it their all no matter what year their birth certificate may read.
