‘Captain Marvel’ Gets a Hilarious Blockbuster Parody

Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) is ready to make it a Blockbuster Night in a brilliant new “trailer” for Captain Marvel that ran on Conan.

Like the official Captain Marvel trailer, the one introduced by Conan O’Brien begins with Danvers crashing through the roof of a Blockbuster Video in an establishing shot meant to suggest the movie takes place in the recent past.

Unlike the official trailer, though, the Conan version goes on to follow Carol through the stacks, watching her sift through VHS copies of The Goonies, Batman, St. Elmo’s Fire, and more. Eventually, she seems to settle on Ghost Dad, a forgettable 1990 comedy featuring disgraced comedian Bill Cosby.

According to the captions, though, Captain Marvel will be two hours of watching the title character choose a movie on VHS, and then watching her watch that movie. And you’ll watch it and like it, because it’s a Marvel movie!

So if you are one of those people who have been talking about “Blockbuster nostalgia” and missing the experience of walking through a video store to make your selection, it sounds like this movie might just be for you.

Blockbuster Video at its peak had over 9000 stores. In 1989 a new store opened every 17 hours! But now there is only one remaining — in Bend, Oregon, the home of director Taylor Morden and producer Zeke Kamm, who are making a documentary about the store and the history of video rental in America.

Captain Marvel will be set in the ’90s of the MCU, exploring an era that has only briefly been featured as part of quick flashbacks in various films. Marvel Studios producer Jonathan Schwartz explained why this is the right setting to showcase the character’s debut in the superhero franchise.

“It’s giving Carol a place in the cinematic universe that she can carve out for her own, where she wasn’t one superheroine out of many,” Schwartz told EW. “’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. 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.”

After her debut in the solo film, Captain Marvel will team up with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes to finish the fight with Thanos in the untitled sequel to Avengers: Infinity War.

But first, Captain Marvel premieres in theaters on March 8, 2019.