Here’s why you’ll want to keep watching ‘Infinity War’ after the credits start rolling

Long gone are the days when you could watch a film, watch the final scene, and leave the cinema in the knowledge you weren’t going to miss anything else of note.

Every film in the Marvel cinematic universe seems to have at least one teaser for an upcoming release, but it’s not limited to those movies.

At the end of 22 Jump Street we got teasers for countless fake sequel ideas, while those who went to see The Disaster Artist at cinemas had to wait until after the credits to get a glimpse of Tommy Wiseau’s cameo as ‘Henry’.

So, with another Marvel film on the way, in the form of Infinity War, there’s almost as much chat about the last few minutes in the cinema as there is about the film as a whole.

Infinity War is out this week, and directors Anthony and Joe Russo spoke to BackstageOL to shed some light on what to expect from the film.

“A lot of the characters are meeting each other for the first time, and that becomes a surrogate for the audience to gain information about the characters,” Joe said.

“So if you have friends who have never seen anything of Marvel they can come see this film and I think they’ll understand it and enjoy it, but if you want to, the most recent things that are the most important are Captain America: Civil War and Black Panther.”

However, the bigger question concerned post-credits scenes, and the Russo brothers were a little cagier than one might expect when asked whether viewers would need to stay right until the end.

“When the credits start coming up and you start to see card after card of movie star after movie star, and it starts to go on, and on, and on, and on…nobody’s ever seen a list of actor names like that,” Anthony said.

And we can see where he’s coming from: the Infinity War cast includes *deep breath* Isabella Amara, Angela Bassett, Jacob Batalon, Dave Bautista, Paul Bettany, Chadwick Boseman, Josh Brolin, Don Cheadle, Bradley Cooper, Benedict Cumberbatch, Vin Diesel, Peter Dinklage, Robert Downey Jr, Winston Duke, Idris Elba, Chris Evans, Jon Favreau, Karen Gillan, Danai Gurira, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Tom Holland, William Hurt, Scarlett Johansson, Florence Kasumba, Pom Klementieff, Anthony Mackie, Elizabeth Olsen, Gwyneth Paltrow, Chris Pratt, Jeremy Renner, Paul Rudd, Mark Ruffalo,  Zoe Saldana, Cobie Smulders, Sebastian Stan, Tessa Thompson, Benicio del Toro, Benedict Wong and Letitia Wright,   

So, yes there’s reason to stick around, but maybe not for the usual reasons – does this mean there’s no post-credits scene; no teaser for a future Marvel film?

Perhaps it’s a double-bluff, designed to ensure only those who fully commit to it will be rewarded with extra footage. After all, we can’t remember too many films within the universe which don’t have something extra either during or after the credits.

Either way, we won’t have to wait too long to find out.

(Images: Marvel Studios)