(There are no spoilers in what follows)

Rather belatedly, I saw Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2.

An absolutely wonderful Film.

At the end of the screening, only three of us sat through the end credits in the cinema.

The rest of the audience missed the five – count ‘em – FIVE – extra bits of full-screen live-action scattered amid the credits.

I am enthusiastic about film-makers doing this. It is an added bonus for genuine movie lovers.

Frankly, if people walk out before the end of the movie, they deserve to miss out.

When I saw On Her Majesty’s Secret Service on release in 1969, because audiences were so familiar, even then, with the techniques of film-making, about 20 people in the cinema walked out when the plot seemed to have been rounded-off nicely with James Bond’s wedding and there was a slow, rising and widening crane shot – a very normal end shot for a movie. By leaving before the credits had even started rolling, they missed out on the plot-changing coda to the film.

I have never been sure if this was or was not an intentional fake ending put in by director Peter Hunt.

The most famous intentional fake ending to a film (now almost de rigueur in horror films) is almost un-arguably Carrie (1976), where Brian De Palma, master of cinematic technique, with careful use of music etc, made the audience believe the main plot of the film had ended and then suddenly pulled out a shock from nowhere. I did not know there was a fake ending and saw the movie one afternoon towards the end of its run in London’s Odeon Leicester Square. I was sitting alone in the front row and there were maybe twelve people clustered in the back rows.

When De Palma pulled the shock, there were multiple audible gasps and one shriek from the back of the cinema and – literally – I felt as if my blood had turned to ice. My blood ran cold.

Next to a particular unexpected shot in the middle of George A.Romero’s original Night of The Living Dead (1968) where those who have not seen it before almost always let out audible gasps, it is the most frightening shot I have ever seen in cinema. The bath scene in Les Diaboliques (1955) had little effect on me.

But, as well as admirable shock and fake endings, there is now a scattered genre of additional sequences at the end of films – Marvel have virtually annexed it as a house style, thus the FIVE additional sequences in Guardians of The Galaxy, Vol 2.

The recent Kong: Skull Island (2017) had a surprise addendum teasing a sequel and even the Fast and the Furious and Pirates of the Caribbean films have caught on to them.

Movies as far back as Airplane! (1980), Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) and American Gangster (2007) have used them fairly inconsequentially. At the end of Lethal Weapon 3 (1992) Richard Donner and Joel Silver blew up  an entire mega hotel for no reason. Just as a bonus, I suspect, for anyone who had sat through the credits. Good for them.

But I remember at least two addenda where the REAL ending of the film was missed by a large number if not most of the audience who just left when the credits started.

In Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), the film very definitely ended.

The credits rolled and then there was a long additional sequence which ultimately climaxed in a revelation about one of the central characters in the film which totally changed your understanding of what had happened.

L.A. Confidential (1990), has a relatively up-beat ending but, after the end credits have rolled…

…there are flash-forwards in the story which give the movie a much more cynical ending. I think I have seen it on British TV three times and, each time, the additional sequences have not been screened because, presumably, the people preparing the film for screening did not realise there was something else at the end in addition to the credits.

Returning to Guardians of the Galaxy, good old Marvel included a brief (unexplained) sequence with their character Howard The Duck in the first movie (2014).

And, in Vol 2, he appears (again unexplained) in a brief sequence within the film itself AND within the end credits. I can only hope this means Marvel are, at some point going to make a movie of Howard The Duck, my favourite Marvel character who was mutilated and cutesified beyond belief in George Lucas’ vomit-inducing ultra-cuddly family-friendly film of 1986.

My hope rests on the fact that the final sequence in Guardians of The Galaxy, Vol.2 has Marvel Comics’ maestro Stan Lee referring to all the other good Marvel characters he has created.

Howard The Duck makes Rocket Racoon seem like Mary Poppins.

Fast & The Furious

Pirates of the Caribbean

Airplane

American Gangster

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off