Marvel's Emotional Response Machine
By: Susanna Mendenhall
Of all the things Marvel does consistently well, creating community-building bonds through shared emotional experiences tops the list. Marvel has created an immensely successful formula for the manufacture of these emotional experiences, and it often starts at the end of a movie. As most fans have learned, Marvel includes one or two scenes at the end of their movies that teases an upcoming movie, announces a returning character, or bridges individual franchises. Not only are these a brilliant marketing tool, but these post-credit scenes are a cornerstone of the Marvel fanbase as they serve as a foundation for discourse and a way to distinguish “real fans” from casual
viewers. The Marvel emotional response formula begins with creating a divide, a group who are ‘in the know’ and a group who are not. As with any group centered on a shared mythos, the commitment to share and invest in that mythos leads to a heightened susceptibility to emotional appeals surrounding that mythos. Simply being a fan ‘in the know,’ and being committed to staying ‘in the know,’ makes it easier to be swayed by Marvel’s many emotional appeals.
Tom Holland’s Spider-Man first appeared in Captain America: Civil War (2016) when recruited by Tony Stark to help fight Captain America, in a move that would eventually lead to the Avengers reuniting. The second post-credit scene of this movie featured Tom Holland’s Peter Parker having returned to the care of Aunt May in Queens post battle. The scene comes to a close with dramatic music building to a sharp crescendo that ends a moment before “Spider-Man will return” appears over the blackened screen. The simplicity of the announcement’s phrasing along with the building music after having seen Spider-Man in a Marvel movie for the first time creates an emotional response in Marvel and
Spider-Man fans alike. The positive responses to this post-credit scene pave the way for a positive, and emotional, trailer release.
The trailer is not only Marvel’s biggest bid for new viewers, it’s also the biggest arena for those ‘in the know’ fans to build their ethos within the fanbase. The trailers give insight into potential plot lines and dedicated fans can display their knowledge of the stories by commenting on or proposing fan theories backed by evidence from comics, movies, and interviews. In the case of the trailer for Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019), a confused Peter Parker mourning the death of his mentor Tony Stark attempts to run from his problems on a class trip to Europe and ends up teaming up with Mysterio to fight the Elementals. However, eagle eyed viewers and those familiar with the comics were quick to remind the fanbase that Mysterio was in fact a villain in the comics, and that the trailer was intentionally misleading for dramatic effect. Despite one of the major plot line reveals circulating the web months before the movie’s release, the trailer still ensures an emotional ride with Peter Parker claiming that “The world needs the next Iron Man” and Nick Fury saying — in a different scene entirely—“Are you going to step up, or not?” This movie was the first Marvel movie released following the harrowing sacrificial death of Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man in Avengers: Endgame meaning fans were on edge to see if Peter Parker would pick up the torch that Tony Stark was seemingly handing him in the previous movies.
The multitude of theories floating around social media following the release of this trailer are a testament to the fans’ investment in the mythos and discourse surrounding their favorite characters. Theories spanning Spider-Man’s potential leadership role in the Avengers, how exactly MJ came to find out that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, and how Peter Parker obtained Tony Stark’s iconic glasses were all inspired by the post-credit scenes and the trailers prior to the movie’s release. The discourse surrounding these short scenes, amounting to no more than ten minutes of screen time, is at the foundation of Marvel’s emotional response formula that leads to emotional audience reactions in theaters which in turn necessitates further discourse.