It is now a standard feature of the typical Hollywood blockbuster. You watch scenes that have become more complex and dazzling than ever in their visual effects and technical mastery, then sit through end credits that feel almost novelistic in length: hundreds, or frequently thousands, of names in a blur of acknowledgment of the village it took to stage a superhero battle or bring robots to photorealistic life.

The names can occupy five to 10 minutes or more of a movie’s running time. And we’re often staying put so as not to miss a possible extra scene or a tease to other films in a franchise. In the meantime, we learn about film jobs we had no idea existed. (Hello, render wrangler!) And yet many names are still missing, and some in the industry don’t think the credits are long enough.

How did we get here?

It used to be much simpler. The earliest films, shown at nickelodeons at the start of the 1900s, had no credits at all, just the title.

“But then eventually people started to recognize stars that they liked,” said Dave Kehr, a curator for the department of film at the Museum of Modern Art. He mentioned the emergence of the silent-era actress Florence Lawrence, who wasn’t credited in her earliest films but built a fan following to the point that her name eventually appeared on a movie poster, making her one of the very first movie stars.