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• Published date: 29 November 2022
• Publication title: Signal

Brian Truitt

Credit: USA Today

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.

For real, Bacon’s an MCU regular now, the same as Spider-Man, Doctor Strange and Megan Thee Stallion.

‘‘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 merry band of intergalactic misfits in ‘‘The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special’’ (streaming now on Disney+).

In a tinsel-tinged tale that doubles as a lead-up to ‘‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’’ (in theaters May 5), Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is bummed because Gamora (Zoe Saldaña) is missing. His teammates Drax (Dave Bautista) and Mantis (Pom Klementieff) remember that Peter 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 LA to bring the actor back as a present for their sad buddy.

Drax and Mantis together are ‘‘Costello and Costello,’’ Gunn says. ‘‘They’ve been in the distant background for (several) Marvel movies 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. She just gets so frustrated with Drax, but then half the time it’s really her fault anyway. They’re both such dinguses.’’

High jinks with decorations, drunken shenanigans and a dust-up with the law ensue, but 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 space-bound 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 of it all goes back to the original 2014 ‘‘Guardians‘‘: 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, leading to the actor’s appearance in the holiday special, and Bacon recalls first seeing ‘‘Guardians’’ at a matinee in Manhattan. ‘‘I’m sitting there and all of a...