Guardians of the Galaxy’s James Gunn visited “The Q&A” with Jeff Goldsmith to discuss the creative process behind Marvel’s massive summer hit, and, in the process, revealed that Stan Lee’s originally planned cameo was not a pretty one. “We were going to murder Stan Lee. We killed him, that’s one of the main reasons it’s not in the movie,” Gunn said. The writer-director explained that the scrapped scene had the 91-year-old comic icon appearing — in two versions — as a prisoner in the Collector’s museum. In one, Lee was shown sitting in his holding box and flipping off a curious Groot. In another, he, along with the Collector’s museum, exploded. “I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if Stan Lee’s — these are the kinds of ideas I come up with, and Marvel would say, Uh, I think that’s super James Gunn — ‘where Stan Lee’s head is rolling into frame?’” Alas, it was too joke-y, and Gunn went with this. Long live Cameo Stan!
