Logan Director James Mangold Slams Post-Credit Film Scenes

Logan director James Mangold is very angry about films with post-credit scenes and post-credit scenes in general. Speaking at Audi’s 2018 Writers Guild Association Beyond Words panel (via CinemaBlend), he shared his honest feelings about post-credit scenes, and he was very scathing to say the least. He called the way audiences getting addicted to bonus scenes and post-credit scenes “embarrassing” and much worse.

One of Mangold’s films, The Wolverine, did include a bonus post-credits scene. They are often found during Marvel Studios film releases. Some recent DC Entertainment features have also taken to post-credit bonus scenes. They were not an idea that started with Marvel or comic book movies, but they’ve become more common place for big event films ever since 2008’s Iron Man featured a post-credit scene that introduced Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury telling Tony Stark (Iron Man) about the “Avengers Initiative.” Below are some highlights from Mangold’s rant.

Mangold on how he hates post-credit scenes: “The idea of making a movie that would f****** embarrass me, that’s part of the anesthetizing of this country or the world. That’s further confirming what they already know and tying in with other f****** products and selling them the next movie while you’re making this movie, and kind of all that s*** that I find really f****** embarrassing. Like, that audiences are actually asking for scenes in end credits when those scenes were first developed for movies that suck, so they put something extra at the end to pick up the scores when the movie couldn’t end right on its own f****** feet.”

Mangold on why he finds the idea embarrassing: “Now we’ve actually gotten audiences addicted to a f****** bonus in the credits. It’s f****** embarrassing. It means you couldn’t land your f****** movie is what it means. Even if you got 100,000 Twitter addicts who are gambling on what f****** scene is going to happen after the f****** credits it’s still cheating. It’s just cheating, but there’s all sorts of bad habits like that that f****** horrify me, man, that have become de rigueur in the way we make movies and I think the fear of being one of them that did that end then everyone’s patting me on the back and I feel like s*** inside because I know I cheated, is probably the greatest thing that scares the s*** out of me.”