The pros and cons of post-credit scenes

The Avengers post-credit scene ended the movie on a laugh.

When I saw Wonder Woman, I anticipated a post-credit scene. I stood against the back wall of the Movieworld auditorium, watching the audience slowly file out, as the long, detailed list of names rolled on the screen. A staffer discreetly cleaned up with a broom. A part of me felt slightly ridiculous. I never stick around for the credits (if I'm by myself, anyway), because I'm usually too eager to go to the bathroom.

These days, however, audiences for superhero movies have come to expect some sort of Easter egg scene tacked on to the very end of the film, long after the last production company logo unspools. (In industry lingo, they're called "stingers." They predate the superhero movies by quite a margin.) They usually come in two flavors: a light-hearted, jokey moment, or a tease for the next movie. Are they necessary? No; they're usually a little something extra for the fans, a way of saying "thanks for watching." Could it be, though, that they're drawing more attention than necessary?

Josh Brolin's uber-baddie Thanos has been teased after the
Avengers movies for awhile.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 had FIVE post-credit scenes - or more accurately, closing credit scenes. They were interspersed throughout the credit roll. Two of them, arguably three, were teasers for the next movie. In and of themselves, they were funny and intriguing, but I feel like this is a sure sign of success going to the filmmakers' heads. It's self-indulgent.

When Marvel Studios did it with the first wave of Avengers movies, they bonded the films and built up anticipation for the Avengers movie, when we'd finally see all these characters together in one film. Could they have been integrated into the bodies of their respective films? Probably. Would they have generated the same amount of attention? Debatable.

That's what these scenes are about, at the heart of it all: buzz; generating hype for what's to come - because we know there will be more shared-universe superhero movies, from Marvel and WB (parent company of DC Comics), at any rate. It's like they're the US and the Soviet Union, engaged in an ever-escalating nuclear arms race, only the end result here is more like Mutually Assured Box Office.

Some scenes, like the one after X-Men: Apocalypse, can
leave non-TruFans® baffled with their vagueness.

The whole thing almost makes me wish all these superheroes were in the public domain, so we could get interpretations of these characters that weren't shackled to the shared-universe concept. (I know the prospect excited me at first, but that was before I realized what it would lead to.) In the comics, they publish alternate-universe stories, reinterpreting the heroes in different times and places. Imagine if the same were done for the movies: a Superman inspired by the "World of Tomorrow" future of the 1939 World's Fair. A Batman set during the Revolutionary War. A Marvel Universe set in the time of Queen Elizabeth. But perhaps we're not ready for that yet.

Getting back to the post-credit scenes. I hear you complaining: "If you don't like them, don't watch them!" What can I say? If I lived without the Internet, maybe I would. If it were possible to avoid any and all discussion of them, on- and off-line, from now until the end of time, I might do that. The fanboy mentality, however, has infected moviegoers, and like zombies looking for some brains to munch on, we notice and discuss the minutiae of genre movies, especially things like post-credit scenes. I think the jury's still out deciding whether or not this is a good thing.

The Movieworld staffer saw me and said there was no such scene after Wonder Woman. I thanked him and left. Its absence didn't bother me. Who knows? Maybe it's the sign of a counter-trend.

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