Yes, That Blockbuster in Captain Marvel was Full of Actual VHS Tapes

Captain Marvel took us to the middle of a much more sophisticated time in the 1990s, where [...]

By Adam Barnhardt

Captain Marvel took us to the middle of a much more sophisticated time in the 1990s, where Counting Crows ruled the charts and there wasn't an outlet for people to rage tweet into a void. Though starting among the cosmos, the film took an Earth-bound turn as Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) crashed through the roof a Blockbuster store, taking movie-goers right back to good old days. Since, you know, Blockbuster is just as extinct as Circuit City, it's something the production had to build from the ground up.

The set piece was built as an actual store, including shelf after shelf of the best medium available at the time: VHS tapes. We recently spoke with Captain Marvel production designer Andy Nicholson and according to him, each of those tapes was 100% the real deal.

"Yeah, absolutely," Nicholson says about the authenticity of the VHS tapes. "The thing about VHSes is when you can find them, they're not expensive because no one really wants them because they're such low resolution. It took a lot of time with my set decoration department to source everything we needed, but none of the things were expensive."

The set design team took the direction many of us would if we were looking for some vintage movies — they headed to an online marketplace you're all familiar with.

"Occasionally they'd go on eBay and they'd find you know a crate of videos, but it was about getting the ones from the right year," reveals Nicholson. "It wasn't difficult it just took a lot of time and you know, if you go to the library for a film, there are places you can rent books by the yard from but that is not the case for VHSes and there's not that much call for them, so it took a lot of time."

"We bought a boatload of empty Blockbuster style cases for a lot of the stuff, that was the easy part of it. But you know in Blockbusters, you would also have the original covers and getting enough of those for the store was quite something."

What do you hope the inevitable Captain Marvel sequel is about? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below or by hitting me up on Twitter at @AdamBarnhardt to chat all things MCU!

Captain Marvel is now available digitally ahead of a home media release on June 11th. Avengers: Endgame is now showing while Spider-Man: Far From Home swings into action July 2nd.

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