Back before Black Widow scissor-kicked her way into our hearts, or Mary Jane upside down kissed Spider-Man, or Storm showed us what happened to a toad struck by lightning, back even before a hemotologist saved a daywalking vampire in Blade, there was an actress helming a major Marvel motion picture. That woman is Lea Thompson, the human star of the abysmal yet compelling Howard the Duck.
In a recent Yahoo Movies interview on Facebook Live, Thompson admitted that her near star-burning turn in George Lucas’s first critical flop makes her Marvel movie royalty. “I am the first queen of Marvel,” she said.
And let’s be real, she is. It might pain younger fans to know this, but Marvel used to be a massive joke, cinematically speaking. Howard the Duck was the first Marvel property in movie theaters since the Captain America serials in 1944. Sure it flopped, and yes the following Marvel movies (Dolph Lundgren’s The Punisher, Roger Corman’s unreleased Fantastic Four, Cannon Group’s direct-to-home video Captain America) were even worse, but whatever. Howard the Duck was, and remains, fun. It’s a tonal nightmare that’s fully supportive of bestiality and relegates Tim Robbins to goofy sidekick.
“People love that movie,” Thompson told Yahoo Movies. And what issues does the Back to the Future star who made a career out of questionable romantic choices in ‘80s flicks have with Howard the Duck? Is it the bad jokes? The duck lady with mammaries? That fact that Thompson’s character actually had sex with a large, talking duck from another dimension?
“I thought it was a little long.”
