With ten years of films, Captain Marvel is a little late to the Marvel Cinematic Universe party. It's because of this, the superhero, whose real name is Carol Danvers, will be introduced during the decade of VHS tapes, dial-up internet, and slap bracelets, better known as the '90s.
"It’s giving Carol [Danvers] a place in the cinematic universe that she can carve out for her own, where she wasn’t one superheroine out of many," executive producer Jonathan Schwartz told Entertainment Weekly. It helped that the '90s doesn't feel like it's too much in the past (likely thanks to millennials and nostalgia culture.)
"The '90s doesn’t feel that long ago to us because we’re really old," said Captain Marvel co-director Anna Boden. "But doing this movie has really made us realize how out of date so much stuff from the ‘90s actually is, and we’ve been having a lot of fun with that."
This film won't be the first time Marvel was inspired by another decade. As EW notes, Captain America: The First Avenger and its spinoff TV series, Agent Carter, took place in the 1940s and Spider-Man Homecoming also drew from '80s coming-of-age rom-coms a la John Hughes. Similarly, Captain Marvel will draw from sci-fi action flicks from the late '80s and throughout the '90s.
"'90s action movie is not the worst reference in the world, especially when you start looking at Robocop, Total Recall, even Starship Troopers a little bit," said Schwartz. "Terminator 2, Independence Day. There’s a high-concept action-movie feel there that ends up being very character-based but also super badass, which is kind of the bullseye we wanted to hit."
Captain Marvel, which stars Brie Larson as the eponymous superhero, arrives in theaters on March 8, 2019.
