New ‘Captain Marvel’ Photo Could Hint at Year the Film is Set

Brie Larson recently debuted the latest look yet at Captain Marvel, and it might be a lot more than meets the eye.

Larson recently shared an official still from Captain Marvel on her Twitter account, as a way to motivate her fans to vote in the midterm elections. The still shows Larson’s Carol Danvers standing in a telephone booth, which is surrounded by various posters plastered on a wall.

As MCU Cosmic recently pointed out, the details of some of the posters just might indicate the exact year in the 1990s that the film is set. One poster promotes a concert happening on Thursday, August 29th — a date that only occurred in 1991 and 1996. When combined with the “Rock the Vote” posters, which was a campaign MTV used leading up to the 1992 election, it seems to indicate that the film might be taking place in 1991.

Of course, there’s a chance that the film really takes place in 1992, and that the August 29th posters have just been on the wall for a long time. But the possibility of Captain Marvel being set in 1991 is particularly interesting, especially considering the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe timeline around that year.

The year most notably plays a role in Captain America: Civil War, as December 16th, 1991 is the date that Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) killed Howard and Maria Stark. If Captain Marvel is set in the later portion of that year, it’s entirely possible that the film could contain a nod to Howard and Maria’s deaths in one way or another.

Regardless of whatever year Captain Marvel is technically set in, it sounds like the film will put a pretty major twist on the typical Marvel Cinematic Universe origin story.

“I think the way the film opens is much different than an origin movie, and because she is a heroine that you haven’t seen before, we’re able to tell this story structurally in a way that will feel unexpected and hopefully will keep audiences off balance,” producer Nate Moore said in an interview earlier this year. “Still balanced enough that they can enjoy the film, but even just making it a period film is sort of interesting in that it’s not just a function of the world as we know it in the MCU today.”

“I think there is a structure to origin films that audiences sometimes can get ahead of very quickly,” Moore continued. “So, if we do origin films, internally, we talk about how we can subvert that structure. For instance, Captain Marvel is an origin movie in that you haven’t seen her before, but we think we’ve stumbled upon a structure there that isn’t the traditional structure of what origin movies typically are.”

“You meet the character, they have a problem, they get powers at the end of the first act, and the end of the second act they learn about the powers, the third act they probably fight a villain who has a function of the same powers,” Moore added. ‘That’s a lot of times what a typical origin movie is structured like, but as we introduce new characters moving forward, we want to find ways to subvert that structure, so at least the experience of the film feels new to audiences. We’re very conscious of making sure that audiences don’t get things that feel like they’ve seen them before.”

What do you think of Captain Marvel possibly being set in 1991? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.

Avengers: Infinity War and Ant-Man and the Wasp are now available on digital platforms, DVD, and Blu-ray. Other upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe movies include Captain Marvel on March 8, 2019; the fourth Avengers movie on May 3, 2019; and Spider-Man: Far From Home on July 5, 2019.