Is it Time For Post-Credit Scenes To Go?

TV & Film

Dec 28

There was a time when the credits started to roll, the house lights would come up and there was a purposeful rush to the cinema’s bathroom.

In recent years though, there has been a new step added - the “wait does this film have a post-credit scene?” dance. While certainly not a new development – the first widely accepted post-credit stinger being from 1966’s The Silencers – these post-credit scenes are now a ubiquitous part of modern cinema and TV.

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Arguably the biggest perpetrator of these in the last decade is the MCU, which brought back the idea of a consistent post-credit scene, a technique which had become less common since the 80s. However, even within this microcosm, the purpose of the stinger always conformed to its cinematic ancestors. It would be a Tease, A Joke, Or an additional bit of character development.

In Iron Man, our scene was Nick Fury teasing a certain Initiative that would go on to shape cinematic history. Iron Man 2’s scene straight-up told Marvel fans that Thor was coming. Even The Avengers showed us a hint of what was coming next, with the first appearance of everyone’s least favourite purple economist. These early Marvel post-credit scenes all had a purpose – to pique the audience's interest and seed speculation about the future.

However, it was also around this time that Marvel started to introduce a Mid Credits pairing. Starting the tradition of - one for the fans, one just for. Captain America: The Winter Soldier introduced The Maximoff Twins, but also Bucky taking a walk down memory lane. Guardians of the Galaxy showed us that the Collector was still alive, but also that Baby Groot could shake it down. So, we had the upcoming hint, but also scenes that just were – almost like a deleted scene. Arguably in this category, you have the jokey ones as well. Kraglin stabbing Drax accidentally, Tony going to Bruce for therapy, or Goose giving back the Tesseract.

Finally, there are several occasions where waiting through the long list of talented people who worked on these films provided a scene which, even now, hasn’t paid off – Stakar reassembling his old team, The Grandmaster dealing with the fallout on Sakaar, or Mordo trying to wipe out Magic from this universe.

It seems that Post-Credit Scenes aren’t going away any time soon. Listen at any press junket for a major film, and you will inevitably hear something along the times of “should fans stick around after the credits for a surprise?”. But is it time for filmmakers to concentrate on just making a solid, self-contained story, and not try to set up a storyline that will pay off in 15 years, or make people physically uncomfortable after a monolith of a film for 3 seconds of watching an ant play the drums? You better stay behind after the sources and ads to find out.

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