Captain Marvel

It’s been common knowledge for a while now that ‘Captain Marvel’ will be set in the 1990s, but now, thanks to the Disney Japan website, that has been narrowed down to a specific year– 1995.  The trailer for the movie showed Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) crashing down into a Blockbuster Video store.  As pointed out by Screen Rant, Blockbuster rebranded in 1996, meaning that the film could not take place after that.  In the infamous clip of Carol punching an elderly woman in the face on a train, a map of the Los Angeles Green Line is visible in the background.  This line opened in 1995.

Of course, there are some anachronisms.  Larson posted the following image on Twitter:

These MTV ‘Rock the Vote’ posters were used in 1992, the year that Bill Clinton was elected for his first term as President.  But it is possible that they were simply left up and never covered.  It’s also possible that during the making of the picture, that the filmmakers didn’t have a specific year in mind.  After all, watching modern movies set in the past forty years or so, it is common to see anachronisms as filmmakers simply strive to capture “The ’70s,” “The ’80s,” “The ’90s” or “The ’00s” and simply toss in props and decor that capture those decades as a whole.

It’s doubtful that ‘Captain Marvel’ will tackle any real world news events from 1995, but in case you were curious, this was the year that saw Dr. Bernard A. Harris, Jr. become the first African American to walk in space, while scientists discovered the first planet outside of our solar system and President Clinton confirmed the existence of the long-fabled Area 51, when he declared that Groom Lake Air Force Base (a.k.a. Area 51) did not have to reveal its environmental records.  Terry Nichols and Timothy McVey bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City, while Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine of his followers were convicted of bombing the World Trade Center in 1993.  Meanwhile, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, crushing peace in that region.  The Ebola virus was discovered after it killed 244 people in Africa, while cult member Aum Shinrikyo unleashed a nerve gas attack in a Tokyo subway, killing 12 and injuring thousands.

Microsoft released Windows 95, JavaScript was introduced, Ebay launched and the DVD was invented.  In Los Angeles, O.J. Simpson was found not guilty of murdering his ex-wife Nicole and Ron Goldman.  ‘Toy Story’, the first computer animated film, was released and became the #1 movie of the year, while Val Kilmer took over as Batman in ‘Batman Forever’ and Pierce Brosnan made his 007 debut in ‘Goldeneye’.  ‘Braveheart’ won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

TV viewers couldn’t get enough of NBC, as ‘E.R.’ ruled, followed by ‘Seinfeld’, ‘Friends’ and er… ‘Caroline in the City’.  On the radio, listeners couldn’t get enough of ‘Gangster’s Paradise’ by Coolio and LV, TLC’s ‘Creep’ and ‘Waterfalls’, and ‘Kiss From A Rose’ by Seal, while in the clubs, Gen-Xers were getting funky to ‘Another Night’ by Real McCoy, ‘Fantasy’ by Mariah Carey and Montell Jordan’s ‘This Is How We Do It’.  But in sadder news, Jerry Garcia of the legendary ’60s band The Grateful Dead passed away and queen of Tejano, Selena was killed by the obsessed president of her fan club.

Here’s hoping at the very least, ‘Captain Marvel’ directors Ryan Boden and Anna Fleck can deliver a period mixtape that does for the ’90s what James Gunn’s ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’s mix tapes did for the ’70s!

‘Captain Marvel’, directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, stars Brie Larson, Ben Mendelsohn, Gemma Chan, Clark Gregg, Djimon Hounsou, Samuel L. Jackson, Jude Law, Lashana Lynch, and Lee Pace, and arrives in theaters on March 8, 2019.