#Every Movie Should End Like Jackie Chan’s ‘Police Story’

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• Meg Shields
• August 19, 2020

(Chanting) Montage! Montage! Montagae!

Opening credits get all the, well, credit. Sure, they set the stage and get you in the mood. That’s an important job. But end credits are rarely held to a similar standard. Unless you’re the kind of person who enjoys reading the names of grips, focus-pullers, and spider wranglers, then when the text crawl starts, you are out the door. And for those who don’t relish end credits for what they are, you can’t blame the others for not sticking around.

For the past decade, Marvel’s plague of “end credits sequences” has kept folks in their seats during the final text crawl. But such end credits sequences were never, really, about the credits themselves. They were about begrudgingly sitting through the credits in the hope that you would get to see a glorified trailer afterward.

But not all end credits are created equal. Some, like those in Around the World in 80 Days and Blue Valentine, are abstract and beautiful to look at. Others, like those of The Hangover and This is Spinal Tap, offer a sidebar of hilarious bonus content. But none of them come close to touching the absolute genius of Police Story, Jackie Chan’s 1985 electro/slapstick/crime comedy about a goofy policeman in over his head.

The end credits of Police Story play over a highlight reel of Chan making the movie. It is one of the most amazing flexes I’ve ever seen. Chan wrote, directed, starred in, and stunt-coordinated the film. And damn it, he wants you to know it. Oh, he also sings the end credits song (“Hero Story”). As the credits crawl by, we see Jackie giving choreography instruction, plus stunts gone wrong, stunts gone right, and of course, even more glass shattering — the crew famously nicknamed the production “Glass Story,” after all.

This is bold, but listen: I think all films should end with a montage showing how the film was made. I want to see compositors at their personalized desks. I want to see auteur jerks being passionate. I want to see green screen goofs (think of what the Cats montage would look like!). Really: I want to see how the sausage was made. After all, isn’t that what end credits are for: to remind you that what you’ve just watched was made by people?

Watch the end credits of Police Story here:

Who made this?

Hong Kong martial artist, actor, stuntman, director, action choreographer, screenwriter, producer, and singer Jackie Chan. Police Story is the first movie produced by Chan’s production company, Golden Way Films. It won Best Picture and Best Action Choreography at the 1986 Hong Kong Film Awards.

More Videos Like This

• How the hell is Jackie Chan still alive?
• Here’s Every Frame a Painting with how Jackie Chan choreographs action comedy by being the underdog, being creative, and using the camera to his advantage
• Related, from Bradley J. Dixon: why Jackie Chan is the master of silent comedy
• Here’s Jackie Chan chatting with IGN about the climactic pole slide jump at the end of the film
• For the Criterion release of Police Story, here’s Edgar Wright on the charisma of Jackie Chan
• Jackie Chan’s Drunken Master II (a.k.a. Legend of the Drunken Master) also has a memorable end credits sequence, this time, a more conventional blooper montage
• Here’s Queue favorite Accented Cinema with why Jackie Chan’s fighting is “fake” and that’s okay
• Famously, Jackie Chan does stunts and choreography over and over again until he gets the take. Which means there’s a lot of failures involved. Here’s a montage of Jackie Chan stunts going wrong