Summary
Ever since the Marvel Cinematic Universe began, post-credit scenes for movies have started to feel like a guarantee, with many films deciding to add them in. Sometimes, they’re exciting teasers for the future, and other times, they feel like a waste of time, but their growing popularity has led to many DCU fans wondering whether James Gunn will be using them for films such asSuperman.
Gunn has experience with post-credit scenes from working on theGuardians of the Galaxytrilogy, but he also knows firsthand how problematic they can be.While he had little choice in whether to use them at Marvel, he’s now the decision-maker for DC, and he will set that tone starting withSupermanlater this summer.
Supermanis going to be the first moviein the new era of DC movies, and it will give fans an idea of what to expect from the franchise moving forward. While the focus will be on the story and tone of the film itself, fans will be sticking around to see if there’s a post-credit scene, and those who do forSupermanwill be rewarded, as it has been confirmed that there will be one. However, Gunn is keen to learn from his past about how he will use post-credit scenes within the world of DC, as he explained toEntertainment Weekly.
“I have a philosophy about post-credit scenes. It’s somewhat related to my own mistakes in my time with Marvel."
Gunn was very open about some of the issues he dealt with throughout his time at Marvel Studiosdue to post-credit scenes, some of which were his own doing, and others were caused in other movies. For instance, the decision to have Thor board the Milano ship to tease joining the Guardians afterAvengers: Endgamewasn’t something that he liked, and he expressly told Marvel that.This is ultimately why the Guardians made a brief appearance inThor: Love and Thunderto tie up that loose end without Chris Hemsworth’s character having to turn up inGuardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3.
“I said in the script notes: ‘I’m not gonna put him in. I don’t want to have Thor in the Guardians. I don’t want to do a movie with Thor.'"
Alternatively, there were mistakes that he made with post-credit scenes, such as inGuardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, when he decided to introduceWill Poulter’s Adam Warlock. That set the expectation for him to be in the third movie and meant that Gunn then had to turn that into a reality to deliver on a promise he’d made to the fans. While Warlock did end up being involved in the third movie, it wasn’t the seamless, smooth addition to the movie that most people had hoped.
“I did not like what I did inGuardians 2where we set up Adam Warlock and we set up the Guardians of the Galaxy and we set up all this s*** that I didn’t necessarily plan on,” Gunn admits. “Well, I guess I kind of planned on fulfilling that [Adam Warlock] promise, but you want to be careful about that. The way a post-credits scene works is a punch to the face, like, ‘Oh my God! Look at this.’ At times when you’re using it just solely to set something up, sometimes you’re screwing yourself over. It was not easy to work Adam Warlock intoGuardians 3.
Overall, Gunn made it clear thathe likes post-credit scenesas he sees them as giving back to the fans, but he intends to be careful with how he uses them within the wider DCU. He wants people to stick around to see all the names of the various crew members who were heavily involved, and that’s something that a post-credits scene helps to facilitate. However, he’s not going to have all the post-credit scenes be something serious that promises things for the future unless he’s confident in delivering it. WhetherSupermangets a serious scene or not will remain to be seen, but it will at least have one.
