Credits

Michael Hartl — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 18:31:00 -0700

Warning: mild spoilers from the movie Cars below. Also, this is my first rant, so the tone is a bit more, well, unhinged than my usual posts.

I love all the Pixar movies, so today I joined several small children (and their parents) to see their newest offering, Cars. On the whole, I enjoyed it very much, though, as with most popular entertainment, the economics sucked. (I am probably the only person in the world who cares about the economics in movies. Pixar is good for the most part, but they’re not perfect: The Incredibles irritated me with their demonization of insurance companies, while Cars missed the boat by blaming an interstate highway for the decline of a small town on Route 66.) But that’s not what this rant is about. It’s about: what the fuck is wrong with you people.

As with A Bug’s Life, one of its Pixar predecessors, Cars was funny all the way through, but the funniest part happened after the credits started to roll. In A Bug’s Life, it was a selection of hilarious “outtakes” that had me rolling in the aisles. With Cars, there were several amusements, but the best by far was a scene showing the cars from the movie (who exist in a world where there are no people, only cars) watching Pixar movies with cars playing the characters in those movies: A Car Toy Story, a Monsters, Inc. parody, and A Bug’s Life starring, of course, a Volkswagen bug. The best part was that the scenes they showed from the previous movies all involved characters voiced by Pixar good-luck charm John Ratzenberger—with the character Ratzenberger voiced in Cars watching, and commenting on how—wait a minute!—they were just using the same voice in all the movies! It was rad, rad, rad, I tells ya.

So what’s wrong? What’s wrong is that people started leaving as soon as the credits started to roll, even though the movie never stopped for even a second. These people had just paid good money to sit through twenty minutes of previews, a cartoon short, and a whole movie—but as soon as the credits started to roll it was as if someone yelled “fire” in, well, a crowded theater. Exactly the same thing happened when I saw A Bug’s Life.

What the fuck is wrong with you people? Apparently, they are so conditioned to associate credits with “the end” that they leave even though the movie is still going on right in front of them.

I should mention, as an aside, that Cars also had an Easter egg, to be found only when the credits were over. I never leave during the credits of any movie, even when it looks like it’s just the credits, because I love Easter eggs, and I love the smug sense of superiority that comes from being the only one in the theater left to see them—recent examples include a tasty little treat at the end of Pirates of the Caribbean (the first one; I don’t know about Dead Man’s Chest yet, but I bet it has one, too), a flipping hilarious wedding at the end of Napoleon Dynamite, and a crucial scene that you are all complete morons for missing at the end of X-Men III.

I sort of understand why people don’t sit around and wait for Easter eggs, though I suspect most people are just ignorant. But leaving when the movie is still going? I just don’t get it. Fire? There’s a fire? Gotta get out of here!

Ah, that feels better. Now, time to take my meds.

Eikonoklastes by Michael Hartl: Credits

Credits