During an interview with IGN, Tomorrowland writer Damon Lindelof described his (serious? silly?) pitch for a post-credits sequence that unsurprisingly didn’t happen:
At the very end of the movie – if you watch the credits – there’s a pin, and you see someone picking it up. The reveal would be Sam Jackson, wearing an eye patch and holding a lightsaber and he looks sort of befuddled – maybe a Frozone uniform – and he goes ‘I’m in this one too?’ And bam, cut to black.
This idea is fantastic for two reasons.
One, it playfully mocks Jackson’s omnipresence, his originating role in the current fad of post-credits sequences, Disney’s blockbuster roster and the cross-over potential that it represents. It’s just a shame they couldn’t work in a Black Snake Moan reference.
Two, post-credits sequences suck. They were cool for a few minutes, but they’re generally worthless now – forced added content that belongs online, meaningless nods to insider fan knowledge, or lazy shots to remind the viewer of the next movie on the way (looking at you, Thanos).
When Jackson first appeared at the end of Iron Man to act as Marvel’s Babe Ruth, pointing to the bleachers of MCU dominance, it was to share a big vision for the future to fans. It was a joyous surprise following an entertaining movie. Now Marvel has press conferences five years in advance for that kind of thing, and their post-credits sequences have naturally devolved. Other studios’ sequences have never been particularly good or engaging anyway.
Don’t get me wrong – Howard the Duck sipping a martini is funny, but it’s not worth sitting through credits for. Studios, most of all Marvel, seem to understand that since they’ve shifted most of these scenes to just after an animated main credits sequence.
So how do you freshen up a stale fad? Make it funny. Nick Furozone wielding a lightsaber would have been an odd way to end a Disney movie about a futuristic society trying to make the world better, but at least it would have been interesting.
