SPOILERS for Materialists are ahead! If you have not seen the movie yet, you can catch it in theaters now.
When you look at the list of projects on the 2025 movie schedule, you expect end-credit sequences on upcoming Marvel movies and maybe an action movie here and there. You likely don’t expect one for a romance. However, Celine Song’s Materialists has one. So, when I sat down to interview the writer/director, I asked her about this unconventional choice, and she told me why she “knew” she wanted to end her film with this poignant scene.
Ahead of Materialists' release, I had the chance to interview Song about her romance, and I knew I had to ask about the end credits. As the names of the cast and crew rolled, a full scene played out that showed Dakota Johnson and Chris Evans’ characters getting married at City Hall. However, instead of the camera being close to and moving with them, it was stationary and far away, like a security camera.
Speaking about why she chose that distant and stationary angle, Song told me:
First of all, I wanted it to be from the security camera that is just planted there, just like, capturing what's coming and going of it, because I think that's the most romantic angle of that space.
Like other great end-credits scenes, this gave us a peek into what was next for the characters, and it served as a lovely and unique epilogue to the story Song told. I’d never seen anything quite like it; however, it also captured an experience many couples have had.
Speaking to that point, the writer/director told me that she married her partner, Challengers writer Justin Kuritzkes, at City Hall. During that time, she realized the point that’s illustrated in these end credits.
In the Materialists scene, you can spot Johnson’s Lucy and Evans’ John getting married; however, you can also watch countless other couples tie the knot. To Song, this shows the totally unique yet universal way of love. While each couple has their own story, they also go to this place to do the exact same thing. She explained:
I got married to City Hall, and we had a wedding after that. But we, I first got married at City Hall, and I remember thinking it's the most romantic place on earth. And I think it's because it's like a deli or a DMV, right? And it's like, we're all there, and each of us are there with our very unique love and love story. But we're all there to do the same thing, which is to put our names on record, next to each other. What a funny thing they're really trying to do.
Along with highlighting this experience that’s both individual and universal, the Past Lives director told me that this final moment also points out a central theme of this movie.
Materialists spend a lot of time considering the, for lack of a better term, material attributes we desire in a partner and the unexplainable magic of love. These two things butt heads in the film, however, in this final moment, the director says you can see them come together:
It's such an encapsulation of both the totally material and tangible and totally ephemeral and holy about love and marriage…I always knew that it was gonna end there, and sometimes my joke is like, ‘I made this movie so that we can see that space. We can see the City Hall with a new eye, right?’ So it's almost like that's what we're all driving towards.
Isn’t that beautiful? I also love that Celine Song knew her movie would end on this note. As she said, it highlights the message of Materialists perfectly, and it’s such a wildly unique way to present a scene that serves as both an end-credits scene and an epilogue.
So far, Materialsists has been getting rave reactions from critics, and this scene is certainly one of the reasons why I love the film so much. Like all the best rom-coms, this movie left me swooning, and it was carried by brilliant performances from Johnson, Evans and Pedro Pascal. However, while it has all the qualities and talent needed for a great romance, it also marches to the beat of its own drum and is wholly unique thanks to moments like this end credits scene.
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