Re-Watch Captain Marvel's Mid-Credits Scene Before Seeing Avengers: Endgame

Re-Watch Captain Marvel's Mid-Credits Scene Before Seeing Avengers: Endgame

Warning: SPOILERS for Captain Marvel are ahead!

Since the Marvel Cinematic Universe began in 2008, each movie has included at least one extra scene either in the middle of or after the credits, many of which have teased events to come. Captain Marvel kept this tradition going last month, and with only a few days to go until the next MCU installment, Avengers: Endgame, arrives in theaters, now you can officially watch the mid-credits scene that was attached to Carol Danvers’ origin story.

Since we’re still a few months off from Captain Marvel being released on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital HD, the only way one could have watched the movie’s mid and post-credits scenes is either see it in theaters again or find a bootlegged recording online. Fortunately, the Marvel Studios Twitter page included it in its rundown today of the MCU’s many (but not all) mid/post-credits scenes. Alas, if you’ve been wanting to watch a high definition version of Goose coughing up the Tesseract, you’ll need to keep waiting.

As the MCU’s second period piece, Captain Marvel’s main story took place in 1995, over a decade before the events of the modern MCU unfolded. However, in the middle of its credits, we jumped back to the present day, i.e. post-Avengers: Infinity War, when half of all life in the universe was snapped away by Thanos. Infinity War’s post-credits scene showed Nick Fury activating the spruced-up pager Carol Danvers gave him before he also turned to dust.

Somehow, the surviving Avengers found Nick Fury’s pager and brought it back to their base, unsure of what it is and who’s on the other end of the signal it’s broadcasting. Lucky for them, they won’t have to wait long after it shuts off to learn who’s getting the signal, as Carol Danvers has arrived at Avengers HQ wondering where Nick Fury is. Sit down, Carol, they have some bad news for you.

While I’m not 100% sure about this, I suspect that Captain Marvel’s mid-credits scene actually comes from Avengers: Endgame itself, similar to how Ant-Man showed a portion of Captain America: Civil War and Doctor Strange showed a position of Thor: Ragnarok. Perhaps Endgame will show how Captain America, Black Widow and the others feared about Nick Fury’s pager, and/or maybe we’ll see Carol Danvers receive the transmission from wherever she was in the universe.

Even if that’s not the case, now that Carol is back on Earth after all these years, she can ideally help turn the tide in the upcoming re-match against Thanos. While an earlier Avengers: Endgame clip revealed how she and the other heroes intend to take the Infinity Stones from Thanos and undo his genocide, we have no idea if they’ll accomplish that. Frankly, we’re still in the dark about a lot of this movie.

Captain Marvel is winding down its run in theaters, but you can watch Carol Danvers team up with all the other surviving MCU heroes in Avengers: Endgame starting this weekend. Don’t forget to also look through our Marvel movies guide to learn what else is on the horizon for this superhero franchise.

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Chris Pratt Really Didn’t Want To Audition For Guardians Of The Galaxy

Chris Pratt Really Didn’t Want To Audition For Guardians Of The Galaxy

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a massive place, with a ton of franchises and endless heroic characters to follow. But certain properties stand out among the rest as fan favorites, and James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy is definitely one of those. The movies follow a motley crew of misfits, featuring an all-star cast including Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Zoe Saldana, and Chris Pratt.

But it turns out that Chris Pratt wasn't always keen to play Peter Quill/Star-Lord in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In fact, he initially refused to audition for Marvel Studios, making the casting process a complicated one. Marvel casting director Sarah Finn recently recounted this at the Avengers: Endgame premiere, when asked about which Marvel blockbuster was the hardest to cast.

They're all challenging in their own ways, but I'd probably go with Guardians of the Galaxy. James Gunn has been very generous about this in saying that I, to the point of annoying him, kept insisting that Chris Pratt was the guy for the part, but Chris didn't want to play the part and refused to audition.

Well, this is surprising. Chris Pratt seems like the perfect choice to be Star-Lord, given his mixture of comedy and action experience. But the Parks & Rec alum was originally hesitant to join the franchise, so it took some convincing.

While moviegoers know just how successful the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise grew to be, there was no guarantee it would resonate so well with audiences before its 2014 debut. The characters were not household names, and the team included a giant talking tree and a foul mouthed raccoon. Chris Pratt can't be faulted for having some trepidation, before finally agreeing to meet with Sarah Finn and the folks at Marvel.

But once Chris Pratt agreed to read for Star-Lord, Sarah Finn still had to convince James Gunn. As she mentioned in her same interview with Variety,

I finally got him to audition and James Gunn said he didn't want to see him and that really was a challenge. I was really happy when I finally got them together and it was honestly one of those eureka moments that we talk about in casting when it absolutely feels right and you know it's right. James turned to me within ten seconds and said 'He's the guy.'

To me, it sounds like Sarah Finn gets the credit for casting Chris Pratt because she deserves it. The casting director clearly saw something special about Pratt's talents and the lone human Guardian, and it's a decision that seems to have paid off. Pratt has gone on to perform the part in three Marvel blockbusters, and is expected to reprise his role in Avengers: Endgame.

While there was some pullback from both Chris Pratt and James Gunn, eventually the director saw Pratt read as Peter Quill. And almost instantly, he realized that was the right guy all along. Why don't casting directors get Oscar attention, again?

Ultimately Chris Pratt's Star-Lord debuted when Guardians of the Galaxy hit theaters in 2014, and became a summer hit that grossed a whopping $773.3 million. The cast reunited for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 in 2017, which made even more money at the box office and was another critical darling. Pratt leads the cast and gets top billing, and the sequel was largely focused on his relationship with father Ego (Kurt Russell).

Star-Lord and the rest of the Guardians (including newcomer Mantis) were handed over to The Russo Brothers for Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, which let them finally crossover with the greater MCU. They brought in a breathe of fresh air to the ultra-serious Infinity War, and their interactions with Thor and Iron Man didn't disappoint.

They had a major role in the multiple stories, proving how popular and essential the Guardians have become since Chris Pratt auditioned and landed the role of Star-Lord. Gamora was the key to the Soul Stone, while Rocket and Groot helped Thor get his new weapon Stormbreaker. Meanwhile, the rest of the Guardians and Nebula faced Thanos on Titan.

Related: Why The Soul Stone Was Very Important To Avengers: Infinity War’s Script, According To The Writers

Star-Lord's action ultimately helped Thanos' victory, and stopped the team on Titan from beating the big purple guy. When the Mad Titan was briefly incapacitated, Nebula revealed that Gamora was dead, as her sister wasn't there with him. In a fit of rage he punched Josh Brolin's villain, and broke Mantis' concentration in the process. Thanos came to, and made quick work of the heroes with his full power.

It should be interesting to see how Star-Lord factors into Avengers: Endgame. Rocket and Nebula were the only characters to be spared from Thanos' wrath, and the two characters will likely lean on each other in the upcoming blockbuster. Most moviegoers assume the dusted characters will somehow be resurrected, with the newest Endgame trailers indicating the survivors will try to wield the stones themselves.

Some type of resurrection is going to be needed in order for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 to come to fruition. Star-Lord, Rocket, Drax, and Mantis all got dusted thanks to Thanos. So if The Decimation is reversed, the team should be in much better shape. But the big question is what will happen to Gamora. Rather than dying from the snap, she was murdered by Thanos in order to procure the Soul Stone on Vormir. Is there any hope for her?

While it may have been a long road, Chris Pratt's casting as Star-Lord is inspired, and the actor and James Gunn seem to have a good working relationship. This collaboration will continue for Guardians 3, now that Gunn has been officially rehired by Disney to helm the threequel. But first things first: the Guardians and Avengers need to tend to Thanos.

Star-Lord faded to dust in Avengers: Infinity War, and the character is expected to somehow be revived and pop up in Endgame. In the meantime, fill out CinemaBlend's Endgame death pool, and be sure to check out our 2019 release list to plan your next trip to the movies.

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Zachary Levi Ate A Ridiculous Amount Of Food To Get In Shape For Shazam!

Zachary Levi Ate A Ridiculous Amount Of Food To Get In Shape For Shazam!

Zachary Levi was perfect casting to play the child in a man's body that is the superhero Shazam. However, Levi didn't necessarily have the body of a superhero when he was cast in the role. The actor has spoken a lot about what he had to go through to be believable as a superhero. It required a lot of work on his part, but a large amount of that work was actually eating.

While Zachary Levi spent a lot of time at the gym, as you would expect, that gym work was designed to convert calories into muscle, and so he had to consume a massive amount of calories in addition to his workouts. According to Levi...

I got the job and I was in the gym 5-6 days a week. When I was trying to build mass, you’ve got to eat a lot of calories, 3,500-3,700 calories a day. And they have to be really clean calories, they can’t just be Häagen-Dazs!

A fairly standard adult diet would be something around 2,000 calories a day, which means that Zachary Levi was eating nearly double that along with working out nearly every day of the week. On the one hand, working out that much is going to require a pretty impressive calorie intake to keep you from feeling perpetually starved, but that's still a crazy amount of food.

If you could eat anything you wanted then eating that much might not be all that bad, but as Zachary Levi tells People, it's not like he just sat around and ate ice cream. I mean, it's dairy so there's some protein in ice cream, but there was probably a lot more meat and other more serious protein sources included. Levi has said his diet was basically meat and vegetables five times a day, and considering the calorie count, these were probably pretty close to full meals five times a day. Even with the hunger that you get from working out, I can imagine around meal number five eating more food is not what you'd want to spend your time doing, but it's just as necessary as the exercise.

Being a movie star may be largely as glamorous as it appears to be, but sometimes there is some pretty serious work to be done. Levi says it was a dream come true to play the lead in a superhero movie but the guy had to work to make that dream a reality. While looking like a superhero can be done with padded suits and CGI, to feel like a superhero, you've got to still do a lot of the real work.

On the plus side, if you do throw in some ice cream, you probably burn it off pretty quickly based on how much you're working out.

Based on Shazam!'s opening weekend success, it looks like all the hard work was worth it. The film grossed over $50 million in North America and broke the $100 million mark in total overseas business. It's another big hit for DC following Aquaman and Wonder Woman.

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Captain Marvel End Credit Scenes: What Happens, And What They Mean

Captain Marvel End Credit Scenes: What Happens, And What They Mean

Sometimes there’s one, sometimes there’s two, sometimes there’s five, but if a new Marvel Studios film is coming, one thing is certain: there is going to be an end credit sequence. It’s been a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe tradition from the very beginning, and more than 20 movies and 10 years later it remains as strong as ever. It’s one that proudly continues in Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s Captain Marvel, which provides both a cool peek at the future for the titular hero, and a funny final moment for audiences as they leave the theater.

So what happens, and what does it all mean? That’s what we’re here to discuss in this feature – breaking it all down and dissecting what it means. So let’s dive in, but first I’ll take care of this formality:

SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains massive spoilers for Captain Marvel. If you have not yet seen the film, and don't wish to know major, important details about the ending, please bookmark this page and come back after your screening!

Captain Marvel Meets The Avengers

Most Marvel Studios end credits scenes are original creations that were imagined either before or during production of a given film, but there are others that are a bit different. Specifically, rather than being original pieces, they are instead actually clips from upcoming releases. This was first done when the first “trailer” for The Avengers was attached to the end of Captain America: The First Avenger, but other examples can be found in movies like Ant-Man (which teased Captain America: Civil War) and Doctor Strange (which teased Thor: Ragnarok). Now Captain Marvel can be added to that particular list, as what we see as the mid-credits sequence appears to be an edited bit from Joe and Anthony Russo’s upcoming Avengers: Endgame.

Taking us back to the present following the movie’s 1990s-set adventure, the sequence begins with a close-up on Nick Fury’s special pager that we first got to see in the post-credits scene of Avengers: Infinity War. However, instead of displaying the Captain Marvel logo it instead suddenly shuts off.

This is brought to the attention of Captain America (Chris Evans) and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) as they are in Avengers headquarters watching screens tabulating the deaths caused by The Decimation – discussing the utter nightmare of it all. It’s Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) who first notices that the device has gone dark, and along with James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) they try and figure out what’s going on.

It’s noted that pager has been set up with an external power source to run indefinitely, so it’s not a battery issue, and it’s unclear why exactly it would just stop functioning. All the same, they are desperate to know what it is going on with it, and who Fury was trying to contact with its signal. As Black Widow turns to leave, she suddenly finds herself face-to-face with Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), who has returned to Earth following her cosmic adventures. She doesn’t appear to be too happy, though, and has only one question for the group: “Where’s Fury?”

At the end of Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers makes the decision to go out into the furthest reaches of space and help the Skrulls establish a new society, but beyond that we don’t really know much about where she has been for the majority of the last 25 years. That being said, she surely saw the effects of The Decimation regardless of where she was in the universe at the time of Thanos’ snap, and getting the page from Nick Fury as half the people around her disappeared likely wasn’t viewed as a coincidence. It’s probably fair to assume that the special pager turned off as soon as she returned to Earth, and given that she is possibly totally unaware of the existence of the Avengers, it’s not exactly surprising that the first person she looks for is the man who called her back to the planet.

How Carol Danvers will interact with the remaining heroes in Avengers: Endgame is one of the most anticipated aspects of the upcoming blockbuster, and this mid-credits sequence gives us a nice taste. Obviously there is still basically everything left to explore – from everybody explaining who they are and what the hell happened, to how they plan to work together and fix everything – but for now at least we have an idea of the introduction’s context.

Goose Returns The Tesseract

The Tesseract has taken a long, strange journey through the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We got our first look at it all the way back in the post-credits scene of Kenneth Branagh’s Thor, and since then played huge roles in three different features: Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers, and Avengers: Infinity War. And it’s legacy is yet another thing expanded upon in Captain Marvel.

We’ve known that the Tesseract spent decades in the possession of S.H.I.E.L.D., but what nobody knew before Captain Marvel is that it had some wild adventures between being plucked from the ocean by Howard Stark to being presented to Dr. Erik Selvig by Nick Fury. Specifically, it was used by Dr. Wendy Lawson a.k.a. Mar-Vell (Annette Bening) during research on a light speed engine, and then spent a long time being stored in her satellite laboratory. Thanks to the efforts of Carol Danvers, Nick Fury, Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch), and Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) it gets recovered… but then it spent some time in the mouth of a Flerken, which is what brings us to the end credits scene.

During the events of Captain Marvel we see the Flerken named Goose use its tentacles to “swallow” the Tesseract for safe keeping, but the powerful object doesn’t show up again before the end of the main movie. Instead, that bit is saved for the post-credits bit, where Goose is shown hopping up on Nick Fury’s desk. At first it starts making the familiar sound of a cat preparing to cough up a hairball, but rather than a bunch of fur and saliva pouring out of its mouth, it instead expels the Space Stone.

Rather than being a big tease for developing events in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this is more of a one-off goof similar to the drumming giant ant at the end of Ant-Man And The Wasp, or the random rampaging monster in the final seconds of Thor: The Dark World. For what it is, though, it’s great. We probably could have assumed that this was how Nick Fury got the Tesseract back for S.H.I.E.L.D., but it’s much better that we actually got to see it happen.

What did you think about these two Captain Marvel end credit scenes? How do you think they stack up in comparison to other recent tags? What do you expect from Carol Danvers’ first meeting with the Avengers in Endgame? Do you think we’ll ever see Goose again? Tell us your answers to those questions, as well as any other appropriate thoughts, feelings, or opinions you may have in the comments section below!

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How Much Annabelle Comes Home Could Make Opening Weekend

How Much Annabelle Comes Home Could Make Opening Weekend

It may be barely May but the summer movie season essentially started two weeks ago with the release of Avengers: Endgame. This is the time of year when nearly every major release is looking to bring in major box office dollars, especially major franchise players. This includes the Conjuring franchise, as the newest installment of the series, Annabelle Comes Home is looking to bring in something in the neighborhood of $40 million domestic during its opening weekend.

While a $40 million domestic opening might not seem like a great deal, especially now that Avengers: Endgame has completely thrown perspective out of wack by bringing in over $600 million domestically in barely over a week, for Annabelle Comes Home, it's a solid number.

Box Office Pro is projecting a number between $35-$45 million domestic which is a number on par with what most of the films in the Conjuring franchise have done. In fact, the two previous Annabelle movies opened at $35 million and $37 million respectively, so the new movie is actually tracking to do slightly better than the previous films in that particular series.

This is especially good news because horror movies will not be in short supply as we go into the summer. The remake of Child's Play will be hitting theaters only the weekend before Annabelle Comes Home, and the Octavia Spencer-led Ma comes out at the end of May. It's possible horror movie fans might have had their fill before Annabelle Comes Home is released, but based on the numbers, that won't be the case.

This means the new movie will likely also finish up where many of the other Conjuring movies have, which means it has a good shot at breaking the $100 million domestic box office mark. Only the first Annabelle movie was unable to hit that number within the franchise, unless you count The Curse of La Llorona as being part of the series, and the jury is still sort of out on whether or not that one counts.

Of course, considering even those two films had budgets of under $10 million, they were still quite successful financially.

One reason Annabelle Comes Home may do better than other Conjuring movies, beyond the main entries, is that Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson, the stars of the main entries, are set to appear in the new film. This means that fans that maybe haven't been all in on the spinoffs might still give this one a chance.

With The Conjuring 3 still on the horizon, fans may not want to miss this entry in the franchise in case it has bearing on the next movie. This is, after all, how cinematic universes work, and The Conjuring universe is one of the few outside of Marvel to be truly successful.

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Brie Larson Had To Work On Her 'Cool' Face For Captain Marvel

Brie Larson Had To Work On Her 'Cool' Face For Captain Marvel

It took a lot for Room actress Brie Larson to become Captain Marvel. We’ve seen the posts of the months of workouts the actress accomplished to get into shape. However, it takes more than heavy lifting and donning an expensive suit in order to truly become the types of heroes we’ve come to expect in the MCU. Recently, Brie Larson revealed she actually had to train to learn what she dubs Carol Danvers’ “cool face.”

During a recent visit to Jimmy Kimmel Live, the actress revealed that she actually worked with the stunt coordinators on Captain Marvel’s stances. There are moments we see the character in trailers and in posters looking extremely fierce, moments that did not come naturally to Brie Larson, who revealed her “cool face” was just one of “tons of things” she had to learn in order to play the character. She said:

I trained for nine months and got super strong. But then also you have to learn weird things, like how to make a ‘cool’ face. Yeah, they usually are laughing at you while you are trying to find it because it’s hard. At least, I mean it was for me. I would just bust up laughing. So, when I look at all of those posters with like my flaming hair and stuff it cracks me up because I know where I started.

In particular, Brie Larson mentions a scene that fans of the movie have already seen in the trailers. She said the scene is hard to miss because her hair is on fire and she looks somewhat otherworldly, but that it took a long time before she got to that point with the coordinators on set.

In fact, she even showed Kimmel what her original face looked like while she was practicing. Long story short, it’s easy to see why her “cool face” ended up being something Brie Larson really had to work at to play the iconic character.

I mean, that’s cute, but it’s not exactly as worldly and wary as the look she ultimately gives, a look that’s been splashed all over the marketing for Captain Marvel.

Millions of dollars are bandied about to make movies like Captain Marvel a reality. So while in some ways it’s ridiculous to think about someone being at their job and being told they need to work on their “cool face,” in other ways, we totally wouldn’t buy Brie Larson looking wide-eyed and amused at the camera.

Studios really need to get these details right in order to sell a character to the audience and I suppose I’m as thankful that Brie Larson practiced this as much as she did myriad lunges and squats.

We won’t have too much longer to wait and see if Captain Marvel is all that and a bag of potato chips. (Feel free to insert another nineties phrase if you have a better one.) The new MCU movie officially hits theaters on March 8, 2019. You can see the full list of all of the other fine movies hitting theaters in 2019 with CinemaBlend's release schedule or check out what reviews are saying about the flick.

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The Last Jedi’s Rian Johnson Really Loves First The Rise of Skywalker Trailer

The Last Jedi’s Rian Johnson Really Loves First The Rise of Skywalker Trailer

Unofficially, there seems to be a war between those who support Star Wars: The Last Jedi and those who are embracing Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. With J.J. Abrams returning to the fold as co-writer and director of this new film, it felt to some like a bit of a rejection of the bold new direction that Rian Johnson had brought his Star Wars film towards. Those feelings are invalid now, as Johnson himself saw the trailer for the ninth episode of the Skywalker Saga, and shared the following rave review:

It’s hard to argue with a statement like that, as Rian Johnson is as much of a Star Wars fan as J.J. Abrams is. While some may have thought that Abrams’ return would look radically different from Johnson’s middle installment of this third act trilogy, the trailer to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker looks like it fits nicely into the trajectory that the previous film already set up.

What’s also nice to know is the admiration between these two directors is mutual, as earlier today J.J. Abrams handed out a very special thank you to Rian Johnson, in particular for hiring actor Kelly Marie Tran. This comes after Johnson commented on how he’s actually interested to see what J.J. Abrams does with the Star Wars universe in his latest film, even if it happens to retcon pieces of The Last Jedi in order to close this portion of the series.

Though it’s not like Rian Johnson isn’t heading back to that galaxy far, far away himself. Much as Abrams came back for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Johnson will be making more magic in the franchise himself. As previously reported, Rian Johnson is still on track for the trilogy of Star Wars films that take place outside of the Skywalker Saga’s episodic structure. When exactly that’ll take place is in question, particularly in the light of the hiatus recently announced by Disney CEO Bob Iger. But at least for now, as exhibited in his Twitter feed’s latest output, Johnson is still very much on board for whatever comes next.

Star Wars fans, as any fandom at its best behavior, lift each other up in the name of their appreciation of the series. Now that both J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson have provided a bridge between their theoretical halves of the property, it’s up to the fans of both directors to meet in the middle, as they await this next and last chapter of the classic story arc to come to a close.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker heads to theaters on December 20. However, if you’re looking for some movie excitement to tide you over until then, head to our 2019 release schedule to get a jump on this year’s biggest debuts.

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