Christmas is upon us and with it the avalanche of Christmas movies, which usually do not even pass for a moment on the Israeli viewer’s radar. More than 160 (!) Christmas movies (the number, of course, also includes countless recycled TV movies) were released in 2022 alone, but one stands out above them all, even for us: the Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas special, whether thanks to a machine Disney’s marketing or the fact that this will be James Gunn’s penultimate project in the MCU, before he goes to definitively run the rival DC Extended Universe – so obviously it had to be, you know, more special than special. Did it come true? Depends on how you look at it. The trailer promised us a hyper-aware, comedic Christmas special of sorts, but James Gunn (as always, of course) is much more interested in the connections between his characters.
During the special, which is 42 minutes long in total, Drax (Dave Battista) and Mantis (Pom Klementieff) want to save the Christmas of Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), the leader of the Guardians of the Galaxy. To do this, they travel to Earth in order to kidnap Peter’s childhood hero, Kevin Bacon, and give him to Peter as a gift – a ridiculous and fun plan with very self-aware writing, because it has everything a Christmas movie needs: a hero whose holiday is ruined and who loses faith in him, A ridiculous mission to save Christmas and even an excellent musical number (in general, if there’s anything you can count on in the “Guardians of the Galaxy” series, it’s an excellent soundtrack), and the interesting part is how James Gunn manages to deepen Peter’s character precisely in his absence. The real ones missing here are Rocket and Groot, which is a shame – it could have been fun to see them prepare the Christmas party we see at the end, or even do anything else. Because it’s good that the focus is diverted from Peter, but the special would have benefited if he was the only one missing from the equation.
Another and quite surprising thing that happens here thanks to the looser atmosphere are references to other brands that don’t exactly belong to Disney, such as the Transformers and even Batman. This is the first time (and possibly the last) that there is a reference to Batman in the MCU – is this a wink added at a later stage, when Gunn already knew that he was going to head the film department of DC? It’s obviously not a moment that will affect the MCU but it’s still the name I least expected to hear in a Marvel movie. The lack of musical numbers is also disappointing – which is especially noticeable after the first number turns out to be so successful. Not that the film should have been turned into a musical, but at least another two-part segment would have added a lot to several moments where you could easily think “Wow, how would a song fit here now”. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen.
We should also talk for a moment about this special also in the context of the previous celebratory special of the MCU: “Wolf in the Night” is Marvel’s first holiday special released in honor of Halloween. The previous special introduced us to a whole alternative nocturnal world: vampires, strange creatures and hunters competing for dangerous prey hidden in a mysterious mansion. We already know that every Marvel series is basically an extremely long trailer, but that special also managed to present some very beautiful cinematic achievements, certainly relative to the promo. It’s a bar that James Gunn can’t cross this time and he remains within the limits of “good”, but far from “excellent”.