By now, I’m sure many of you know to stay after the credits whenever seeing the latest Marvel movie and, likewise, wonder where the heck everyone else is going when they begin to roll. I mean, haven’t people learned their lesson on numerous occasions since the first Iron Man flick debuted back in 2008?
Of course, this now time-honored tradition had to begin somehow and when recently doing press for Avengers: Infinity War, Marvel Studio’s head honcho Kevin Feige laid it out to Entertainment Weekly:
“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.”
While reminiscing on the possibilities of what was once a brave new world is pretty cool, I can’t help but think of how commendable it is that Feige and company made it all work, even with the absence of Marvel’s most recognizable characters. Sure, they’ve made various Avengers household names in the time since, but it’s hard to ignore how Spider-Man – whom they now have access to – sells more merchandise than any other superhero around the globe.
Furthermore, they’re still making do without the X-Men. Had you grown up in the 1990’s, then you’ll no doubt remember how mutants were once cock of the walk and pretty much remained that way up until Marvel Studios set the new standard.
Getting back to the issue of post-credits scenes, it was obviously Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury who was eventually settled upon to be the lynchpin of the new universe, with Feige saying:
“We wanted Nick Fury to be the character to intertwine characters, but we didn’t want to interrupt the movie. You know, if Sam Jackson in an eyepatch showed up in the middle, it might be jarring. I presumed the only people who would stay through the credits were people who would know who the guy in the eyepatch was.”
Be sure to catch Marvel‘s next movie, Avengers: Infinity War, when it arrives in theaters this Friday. For more on that, give our review a read.