Is it time to do away with post-cred­its scenes?

Logan direc­tor James Man­gold recent­ly had some colour­ful words to describe what he thought of films that have extra scenes dur­ing or after the end cred­its. ​“The idea of mak­ing a movie that would fuck­ing embar­rass me, that’s part of the anes­thetiz­ing of this coun­try or the world,” he told a Writer’s Guild pan­el, lat­er adding, ​“audi­ences are actu­al­ly ask­ing for scenes in end cred­its when those scenes were first devel­oped for movies that suck, so they put some­thing extra at the end to pick up the scores when the movie couldn’t end right on its own fuck­ing feet.”

It’s now com­mon for block­busters to use mid or post-cred­its scenes to tie a fran­chise togeth­er, as well as teas­ing the next instal­ment. While these scenes are extreme­ly pop­u­lar among fans, the ques­tion remains as to how much they actu­al­ly enhance the sto­ry. Is it time to do away with them entirely?

Post-cred­its scenes as we know them today can be traced back to the 1970s (before then rel­a­tive­ly few films had end cred­its at all) and were pri­mar­i­ly employed to make audi­ences laugh or tease a sequel. Lat­er, notable exam­ples include Fer­ris Bueller telling us all to go home, and Air­plane! check­ing in on a cab pas­sen­ger who had been aban­doned ear­ly on in the film. Burt Reynolds movies often fea­tured bloop­ers dur­ing the cred­its, a tra­di­tion that inspired the Toy Sto­ry fran­chise to make fake bloop­ers fea­tur­ing Woody and co corps­ing or fluff­ing their lines.

The more seri­ous cas­es of post-cred­its scenes in the ​’70s and ​’80s tend­ed to revolve around build­ing antic­i­pa­tion for a sequel. These were the days before fol­low-ups were planned well in advance, how­ev­er, and there are sev­er­al films that didn’t deliv­er on their promise. Mas­ters of the Uni­verse​’s end cred­its famous­ly end­ed with Frank Langella’s res­ur­rect­ed Skele­tor pro­claim­ing ​“I’ll be back!” (he wasn’t), while Young Sher­lock Holmes reneged on its promise of a return­ing Mori­ar­ty thanks to a poor box office performance.

A cru­cial moment in the pop­u­lar­i­sa­tion of post-cred­its scenes was the advent of the Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse 10 years ago. The studio’s inten­tion was always to cre­ate a con­nect­ed movie uni­verse that reflect­ed the one which already exist­ed in the comics. Ear­ly ori­gin sto­ries over­lapped before even­tu­al­ly being tied togeth­er by The Avengers. Marvel’s empire effec­tive­ly grew out of one post-cred­its scene – Nick Fury (Samuel L Jack­son) con­fronting Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) about ​“The Avengers Ini­tia­tive” at the end of Iron Man.

It proved to be a stroke of mar­ket­ing genius. Audi­ences left hun­gry to see where that scene would lead, and each sub­se­quent release added anoth­er piece of the puz­zle. Char­ac­ters that weren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly house­hold names, like Thor, or had spent years in devel­op­ment, like Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, were now fast-tracked to suc­cess after being link­ing to oth­er pop­u­lar char­ac­ters. Sev­en­teen films in, post-cred­its scenes are syn­ony­mous with the MCU, and the trend has since been repli­cat­ed by DC, The Fast and the Furi­ous and oth­er high-pro­file franchises.

So, is Man­gold right? Are post-cred­its scenes a crutch for these films to lean on? They cer­tain­ly aren’t always nec­es­sary. Guardians of the Galaxy doesn’t live or die on Howard The Duck’s cameo, and it is doubt­ful that many casu­al fans will even remem­ber the extra tid­bits that arrived at the end of each Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Even Mar­vel took a good-natured swipe at their own tra­di­tion in Spi­der-Man: Home­com­ing, with a Cap­tain Amer­i­ca PSA teach­ing school kids the impor­tance of patience, even if it ​“leads to very lit­tle, and seems like it’s not worth it.”

Mangold’s Logan was best left to stand on its own feet. Yet in this ever-expand­ing world of inter­galac­tic bat­tle, post-cred­its scenes have become part of the spec­ta­cle. At a time when cin­e­mas face increas­ing com­pe­ti­tion from online stream­ing plat­forms, these added scenes reward those who are still will­ing to pur­chase a phys­i­cal tick­et. They func­tion as an added incen­tive, a ploy to draw in crowds that harks back to the ​‘No Spoil­er’ signs which Alfred Hitch­cock would dis­play out­side screen­ings of Psycho.

Per­haps Mangold’s ire is more direct­ed at the idea of Uni­verse film­mak­ing in gen­er­al, where each film serves as a set-up for the next. How­ev­er, while it is entire­ly under­stand­able that some­one who cares pas­sion­ate­ly about their craft should resent the focus being pulled to anoth­er person’s work, this does seem to be the minor­i­ty opin­ion in Hol­ly­wood, at least for now. As Man­gold him­self points out, audi­ences appear to crave these bonus moments, and stu­dios are more than hap­py to acqui­esce to that demand. Whether you love them or loathe them, post-cred­its scenes have become a curi­ous quirk of con­tem­po­rary cin­e­ma –one that doesn’t look like dis­ap­pear­ing any­time soon.