10 Comic-Book Movie Post-Credits Scenes That Weren't Worth Waiting For
About as disappointing as pouring some cereal and discovering there's no milk.
The current saturation of movie post-credits scenes - with everything from Pirates Of The Caribbean to Pacific Rim slotting in additional material after the main event - has inevitably led to a few of them being a tad disappointing.
It's a trend that's existed for decades, but it wasn't until 2008's Iron Man that the 'stinger' (as it's come to be known) truly took off, with movies from a vast range of genres using these additional scenes to tease sequels, make jokes, and even tie up loose plot threads the main film never addressed.
However, their popularity can mean that some studios feel obliged to include one, even when it doesn't appear to make sense and even when isn't necessary, and since audiences are so used to brilliant stingers like The Avengers' Thanos tease, anything that's less than awesome is automatically a let down.
And since comic-book movies seemingly have a mandate to tease spinoffs, sequels and other characters, it's easy to brand their post-credits scenes as a disappointment if they don't adequately do any of those things.
So - let's discuss some of the worst offenders!
10. Thanos Takes The Gauntlet (Avengers: Age Of Ultron)
It would have been very, very difficult for Avengers: Age Of Ultron to come close to - or even tie - the first film, quality-wise.
When The Avengers came out it was the only movie of its kind, bringing a plethora of individual heroes together to form one cinematic super-team, so any sequels would automatically lose points simply because they lacked that first-time 'wow' factor.
Age Of Ultron's post-credits scene suffered a similar fate; by this point, we'd seen Thanos be all threatening and scary in two separate movies (Guardians Of The Galaxy and The Avengers' stinger), so to see him make yet another threat and yet another promise of the badassery he's set to unleash in Infinity War felt like a 'check your watch' type of moment; okay big purple guy, you've been telling us you're going to kick ass since 2012, and you still haven't. So what gives?
Thankfully, Infinity War is less than a year away so we don't have too long to wait to see the Mad Titan in action, but in 2015, this post-credits scene only served as yet another reminder of one of the more frustrating elements of long-form, cinematic universe-style storytelling; having to wait years to get to the good stuff.