Although there have been post-credit scenes in films before Marvel Studios came along, it really has been their use of them that has led a number of filmmakers to follow suit, ending their films with a quick spin on or revelation about what happened in the movie. At the least, it’s a fun thank you for the folks who have stuck around through the credits, at the most it serves to set up a hoped for sequel.
The folks behind this weekend’s Pixels, the alien-invaders-taking-the-form-of-classic-video-arcade-game-characters Adam Sandler comedy, had an idea for a post-credits scene to their film. This is what they had in their script –
PAN UP AND SPIN AROUND, so we face the Washington Monument, damaged but still standing. When we reach the top, we see a small figure on top, hands on hips, watching all this from high above.
Mario.
We zoom in on his face, and he smiles.
CUT TO BLACK
Now I know the first impulse is to say that the scene was cut as all involved knew that anyone who went to film would have run out of the theater as soon as the credits started rolling, if not before. Let’s face it, the reviews have not been kind to this movie, as it currently sits with a score of 19% on Rotten Tomatoes.
But director Chris Columbus explained the deletion to ScreenCrush thusly –
We tried it. There was a moment we even did a previs of it, we thought it was interesting but we wanted to kind of use him somewhere else. I don’t want to spoil the fact that he may be somewhere else in the film but … that ironically is a bigger moment for the audience than the ending with Mario.
Pixels is doing so-so at the US box office and is expected to not quite clear $24 million this weekend according to Deadline. But with the film picking up another $26 million or so overseas, it has already cleared more than half of its reported $88 million budget. So there is a glimmer of a possibility that there could be a sequel to the film, depending how the next few weeks play out. It’s not a foregone conclusion, but its also not entirely ruled out.
