While the cast of the MCU has been known to accidentally drop a spoiler or two in press events, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige tends to be pretty careful about what he says while the public is in earshot. But though his recent speech at the 2018 Britannia Awards offered no new details about upcoming projects, the producer did take the time to recognize the efforts of all the people who make these movies possible.
Feige was at the event accepting the Albert R. Broccoli Britannia Award for Worldwide Contribution to Entertainment when he brought up the post-credits scenes that have been tantalizing viewers for over ten years.
“Movies bring people together, but they also bring people together behind the scenes,” Feige said during his speech. “At Marvel Studios, we’ve been putting a scene after the end credits in all of our films since the very beginning. The fans love it, it’s a tease of something to come.
“But the real bonus is that the audience is going to sit there and look at all the names of the hundreds of thousands of people who work so hard to bring these movies to life. That really inspired me as a kid, to see all those names and I hope it inspires people today.”
Indeed, while viewers choose to remain in their seats in order to catch those last-minute teasers, the post-credits scenes also serve as a pretty effective method of giving a little more exposure to the many people who labor over each new chapter in this superhero saga.
The post-credits tradition started way back in 2008’s Iron Man, when an eye-patched Samuel L. Jackson showed up to inform Tony Stark that he’s “become part of a bigger universe.” Sure enough, Feige recalled earlier this year how this sequence was a key moment in laying the foundations for the interconnected world to follow:
“It occurred to us [while making Iron Man], ‘Well, we don’t have X-Men, we don’t have Fantastic Four, we don’t have Spider-Man, but we have everything else. Even though everything else hadn’t been turned into a big film before, or had the name recognition among non-comic-book readers that others ones did, we had the opportunity to start putting certain heroes in other heroes’ movies, which hadn’t been done before. It’s a bonus of what’s to come.”
This statement becomes pretty ironic in retrospect, seeing how not only is Peter Parker a well-established hero in the MCU, but once the Disney/Fox deal comes through, Marvel Studios will have both the X-Men and the Fantastic Four at their disposal. But before all that, Avengers 4 is set to serve as the culmination point for this franchise’s first eleven years when it hits theaters on May 3rd, 2019.
