Post-cred­its scenes for sequels that were nev­er made

The rise of the post-cred­its scene runs in direct par­al­lel with that of the word ​‘uni­verse’ being used to describe movie fran­chis­es. As stu­dios try to sell us series of films with­in the same elab­o­rate con­ti­nu­ity, an in-pic­ture sequence (suc­ceed­ing the main nar­ra­tive) is a valu­able asset to lay ground­work and whet appetites.

Before the trail­er, the teas­er trail­er or the teas­er trailer’s teas­er trail­er, a mid or post-cred­its scene is now the first piece of mar­ket­ing for any self-respect­ing block­buster. They have accord­ing­ly become the rule instead of the excep­tion, ubiq­ui­tous to the point that in recent inter­views James Man­gold was oblig­ed to explain over and over again why Logan didn’t have one.

Much like the sched­ul­ing of release dates years in advance, such sequences oper­ate under the assump­tion that the ini­tial film will be suc­cess­ful enough to war­rant fur­ther instal­ments. This has result­ed in a pro­ces­sion of scenes teas­ing films that were nev­er actu­al­ly made. Although they illus­trate the sad real­i­ty that the pri­ma­ry goal of a block­buster now is to get you to see the next one, these orphans have a melan­cholic charm of their own, envi­sion­ing an alter­nate real­i­ty in which peo­ple some­how cared about the nar­ra­tive intri­ca­cies of Max Payne. Here are some notable exam­ples of this mod­ern movie phenomenon.

The scene: Some­where in the High­lands, three Scot­tish school kids are lament­ing their inabil­i­ty to seduce Bey­on­cé when they dis­cov­er a smoul­der­ing rock. To the sound of pop-punk bag­pipes, they enlist a handy­man (who refers to him­self in the third per­son) to open it. He com­pletes his task and a hand appears: an alien has improb­a­bly sur­vived the best efforts of the US Navy and will sure­ly kill these teens before any of them even has a pop at Beyoncé.

The scene: Wait­ing until the ori­gin sto­ry is out of the way, it’s com­mon for super­hero movies to hold the big vil­lains for the sequels, as Green Lantern did with touch­ing­ly mis­placed opti­mism: bob­bing about in space, Sine­stro (Mark Strong) removes a green ring and puts on a yel­low one. His cos­tume and eyes turn yel­low and he is very hap­py about this fact. What this would have meant for Ryan Reynolds’ head sit­ting awk­ward­ly atop a com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed body remains a mystery.

The scene: It’s the old­est sto­ry in Hol­ly­wood: an unmanned fight­er jet – which became evil after get­ting struck by light­ning – has had a change of heart and sac­ri­ficed itself. The debris lies strewn across the Kore­an bor­der, but then the light of its ​“brain” switch back on. Where does its alle­giance lie now? How will the Kore­an People’s Army respond? And how it will func­tion giv­en that it has no means of repair­ing itself because it’s a plane?

The scene: Max Payne (Mark Wahlberg) walks into a bar. ​“It’s good to have you back”, the bar­man says, giv­ing him two beers. Max looks con­fused in that Mark Wahlberg-ish way, before real­is­ing that his assas­sin pal Mona Sax (Mila Kunis) is seat­ed near­by. She shows him a news­pa­per arti­cle about the ris­ing stock price of a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny, and this is very dra­mat­ic and seri­ous for some rea­son. It’s been a long time since we watched Max Payne, to be honest.

The scene: Beyond the occa­sion­al joke or call­back, post-cred­its scenes have only gained promi­nence in recent decades, but there are a few ear­li­er exam­ples of abortive teasers, like Mori­ar­ty check­ing into an alpine hotel in Young Sher­lock Holmes, or the con­clu­sion of the baf­fling Mas­ters of the Uni­verse. After being knocked into a chasm, Skele­tor (Frank Lan­gel­la) emerges unscathed from pink, steam­ing water, look­ing straight into the cam­era and cheer­ful­ly pro­claim­ing ​“I’ll be back!”. He wasn’t.

The scene: The rub­ble of Cyber­dyne head­quar­ters. More rub­ble. More rub­ble still. Why are they show­ing us this – the day has been saved. But wait! There’s a glow­ing red thing and a glimpse of a holo­graph­ic Matt Smith. Skynet lives! Giv­en that Smith’s role in this flac­cid Ter­mi­na­tor 2 retread was basi­cal­ly a glo­ri­fied cameo, it wasn’t a sense­less career deci­sion after all. Think of the chaos he will cause in the sequ… Oh, nev­er mind.