The Marvel Cinematic Universe has a lot to answer for, after having Samuel L. Jackson show up as Nick Fury during the credits of Jon Favreau’s Iron Man. In the years since, not only has the post-credits scene become a staple of Kevin Feige’s shared mythology, but it’s also become a common practice for virtually every major franchise in the industry.
We’ve now reached a point where fans stick around right until the screen cuts to black and end up complaining if there’s no bonus footage tacked on at the end, despite the fact that they’ve never been promised anything. The MCU is about the only brand you can rely on 100% of the time to deliver a post-credits stinger, but for any other big budget property, it’s entirely in the hands of the filmmakers.
Godzilla vs. Kong debuts next week, and the pivotal chapter in the MonsterVerse doesn’t feature any additional scenes once the story wraps up, leaving the immediate future of the series shrouded in mystery. In a new interview, director Adam Wingard explained why that is, and unsurprisingly it’s all to do with there being no plans set in stone.
“We actually did shoot a post-credit scene, but we ended up using the footage in the movie itself. We never actually edited it as a post-credit scene. It kind of got cannibalized and ended up sort of being the end of the movie. We used it in a slightly different context than it was originally shot for.
The MonsterVerse is at a crossroads now. It’s really at the point where audiences have to kind of step forward and vote for more of these things. If this movie is a success obviously they will continue forward. But I actually think it’s good that there’s not a post-credit scene because, you know, the MonsterVerse is different from the Marvel universe. Just because you have a universe it doesn’t mean you have to do all the things that Marvel does. And ultimately I think it’s better with sequels to not pigeonhole yourself.
I think some of the best movies are films that work completely independently and you can go into the sequel or the movie can stand alone. But if a movie is totally contingent on a sequel then you are just talking about the next thing that is coming up and you can’t totally enjoy that ride. But yeah, we did shoot one but didn’t end up using it.”
The lack of a post-credits scene in Godzilla vs. Kong hardly signifies that the MonsterVerse is over, and there are probably already more than a few ideas being bounced around behind the scenes at Warner Bros., but sometimes not foreshadowing what’s to come is the best option. Each installment in the franchise has boasted a new director, so whoever steps up to the plate at least has a clean slate to tell their own story, whatever it ends up being.