‘Doctor Strange 2’s mouthy street vendor has a secret history with Marvel

That Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness post-credits moment is for Sam Raimi’s real ones.

You might not get the reference if you’re a younger Marvel fan or if you’ve just never spent much time consuming Raimi’s past work. But the tough-talking pizza-ball vendor who becomes a victim of the good Doctor’s “Why are you punching yourself?” spell is a familiar face for fans of the director’s work.

Say hello to Bruce Campbell. Beloved legend of cult movie fandom, longtime Raimi collaborator, and, whether or not you realize it, a veteran of Marvel’s pre-2008 march to the MCU.

Who is Bruce Campbell?

Bruce Campbell is a prolific film and TV performer, who has headlined all manner of projects since he arrived on the Hollywood scene in the late ’70s. He starred in the USA Network series Burn Notice and turned in a memorable performance as a geriatric Elvis Presley in the cult favorite Bubba Ho-Tep. He’s worked with some of Hollywood’s most talented filmmakers over the years, including Joel and Ethan Coen, Frank Darabont, and John Carpenter.

But most people know Campbell for one main reason: his association with Raimi, starting with their collaborations on the iconic Evil Dead films.

The original Evil Dead, released in 1981, stars Campbell as Ash Williams in a low-budget horror romp. It’s not especially flashy or genre-bending; just lots of schlocky, low-rent makeup and props fueling a demonic assault on the remote cabin where Ash and his companions make their stand. It’s basically an accidental work of camp that takes itself too seriously for the inherent irony and lack of taste to really land.

Campbell makes it work, though. He’s a large, square-jawed man who embodies the essence of the phrase “built like a brick shithouse.” He’s got the swagger of an action hero cut from the Stallone mold, but it pairs with an awkward sort of charisma that screams “cult fave” more than it does “leading man.”

When Raimi got the band back together for Evil Dead II, a similar “demonic assault on a cabin in the woods” type of scenario that leans in on campy comedy with intent, Campbell found his groovy. Where his heightened and almost parodic tough guy act made The Evil Dead more watchable than it deserved to be, it soared to new heights in a sequel that seized on creative opportunities its predecessor missed.

Campbell has been a fixture in Raimi’s work ever since. They did one more Evil Dead film together, 1992’s highly memorable fantasy epic-meets-horror-meets-comedy adventure, Army of Darkness. But Campbell and Raimi have a close relationship to the point that the actor has become a go-to cameo guy for the filmmaker. That’s what brings us to Campbell’s “secret” — it’s only a secret if you’re not familiar with these two — arrival in an earlier take on a Marvel Comics cinematic universe.

Bruce Campbell vs. Spider-Man

Raimi’s status as a cult hero comes from his work on the Evil Dead franchise, but he owes his reputation as a director of big, spectacle-heavy Hollywood blockbusters to a friendly neighborhood Marvel superhero. Six years before Robert Downey, Jr., kicked off the MCU in Iron Man, Raimi led the way with the Spider-Man trilogy, starring Tobey Maguire.

Even if you were too young to see them at the time, Maguire’s stint as the wall-crawler has been back in the public consciousness in recent months after his not-at-all-surprising surprise appearance in Spider-Man: No Way Home. But the Raimi trilogy that introduced Maguire’s Spidey along with Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin and Alfred Molina’s Doc Ock remains an essential piece of the Marvel canon that’s still worth watching today. (Spider-Man 3 is admittedly crap, but it gave us some great memes and GIFs).

Raimi’s Spidey flicks also gave the director a huge platform for crafting a memorable cameo for his longtime friend and Evil Dead star, and he delivered. Campbell pops up as an announcer in the first movie, during an early scene when Maguire’s Peter Parker visits an underground wrestling event.

Campbell returned two more times for cameos in each of Raimi’s subsequent Spidey movies. The roles changed each time, but all three cameos were built for the same impact: Campbell is placed into the world as a dickish obstacle in Peter Parker’s life. Later, in Spider-Man 2 (2004), he’s credited as the “snooty usher,” who bars a late-arriving Peter from entering the theater where Mary-Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) is performing. He’s his friendliest self in Spider-Man 3 (2007) as a French restaurant host who tries to help Peter propose to Mary-Jane, but his overeager maneuverings complicate an ill-fated plan that is already flying off the rails on its own.

Campbell also popped up in one Spider-Man adventure that had nothing to do with Raimi. The actor took on a key role in the 2012 video game The Amazing Spider-Man, where he plays a quest-giver, the “Xtreme Reporter.” Riding high above the streets of New York City in a blimp, Campbell’s boisterous performance sets Spidey up with an assortment of high-flying photo challenges. It’s the actor deploying his trademark knack for one-liners in a new kind of format, but it works really well.

Turning back to Raimi, if there’s any thread tying together all of Campbell’s work with the Multiverse of Madness director together, it’s the fact that he’s frequently used for comic relief. So when cheers greet the arrival of his square jaw as a street vendor in Earth-848, they’re cheers of expectation. Something funny is about to happen, we know. And it does.

After they have their exchange and Strange curses Campbell’s vendor with a self-flagellation spell, a concerned America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) asks how long he’ll stay that way. Three weeks, the Doctor tells her.

The post-credits moment is a playful payoff on that setup: Campbell’s bruised face exclaims “It’s over!” as the punches finally ebb to a halt.

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