Holiday special brings Kevin Bacon into MCU fold
It’s been a big year in James Gunn’s life, and he’s capping it off by giving the Marvel Cinematic Universe the gift of Kevin Bacon.
“I will be disappointed if he doesn’t become an Avenger. I’ve let everyone know that,” says Gunn, the writer/director who teams the Footloose star with his band of intergalactic misfits in The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special (streaming on Disney+).
In a tinsel-tinged tale that doubles as a lead-up to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (in US cinemas on May 5), Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is feeling terrible because Gamora (Zoe Saldaña) is missing.
His teammates Drax (Dave Bautista) and Mantis (Pom Klementieff) remember that Quill loved Christmas when he was a kid on Earth – and Bacon is his all-time hero – so they hop in a spaceship and travel to Los Angeles to bring the actor back as a present for their sad buddy.
Drax and Mantis have “been in the distant background for [several] Marvel films and to bring them to the forefront and just enjoy them as the unattended firehose that the two of them are together was a lot of fun”, Gunn says. “[Mantis] just gets so frustrated with Drax, but then half the time it’s really her fault anyway.” Gunn says he also loved embracing a 1970s holiday special vibe and telling “a sentimental story about the holidays within the anarchic trappings” of his spacebound bunch.
“You need to anchor yourself to something emotionally to tell these stories. If it’s just a giant beam from the sky that’s going to kill the world, people surprisingly care a lot less about that.”
The Bacon bit of it all goes back to the original 2014 Guardians of the Galaxy: Gunn included a scene where Star-Lord, in trying to impress Gamora, tells of the legend of Footloose and how a “great hero named Kevin Bacon” taught a city that “dancing is the greatest
thing there is”. It’s become a running joke in the MCU, and has led to the actor’s appearance in the holiday special.
Bacon recalls seeing the film at a matinee in Manhattan. “I’m sitting there and all of a sudden they’re talking about me,” Bacon says. “You can imagine that that’s a sort of out-of-body experience,
even for the experiences that I’ve had, which have been plenty.”
Bacon, who enjoyed the Christmas party feel on set (“It was 100 per cent fun and silly”), also sings a holiday tune with the band Old 97’s – dressed up as a musical group of space outlaw Ravagers – in the special, which filmed at the same time as Vol. 3.
Gunn included nods to what fans will see in the upcoming movie, such as the launch of new four-storey ship The Bowie and an appearance from telepathic Soviet space dog Cosmo, a computer-generated character played by Maria Bakalova.
“She was on her hands and knees on set every day, walking around being a dog in her grey [motion capture] suit, and it really added a lot to have her there,” Gunn says.
Gunn’s new gig is as co-chairman and CEO of Warner Bros.’ DC Studios with producer Peter Safran. Being in charge of Superman, Wonder Woman and their superfriends, “I love it,” says The Suicide Squad director and Peacemaker creator.
But his “priority right now” is finishing Vol. 3.
“If you look at the list of trilogies, there aren’t a lot of good third movies,” Gunn says. “Being able to do something that is up to snuff really has been my goal from the beginning.”