‘The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special’ Decks the Halls With Chaos and Cheer | Review
Tired of the same old Marvel movies that follow a formula and set up the next super team-up? Looking for an off-beat adventure that’s reminiscent of your favorite comic book one-shot issues? Look no further than the second Disney+ holiday special, The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, which sees Mantis (Pom Klementieff) and Drax (Dave Bautista) setting off on a chaotic holiday misadventure to kidnap Kevin Bacon for Christmas.
After a funky little animated recap of one of Peter Quill’s (Chris Pratt) disastrous Christmas Days with Yondu (Michael Rooker), courtesy of the imaginative storytelling of Kraglin (Sean Gunn), Mantis and Drax devise a plan to bring Christmas to Peter, in an effort to cheer him up—considering he’s still in a pretty rough place following the events of Avengers: Endgame which saw him lose his girlfriend Gamora (Zoe Saldaña). The decision to have Mantis and Drax be the duo to descend upon Los Angeles at Christmas was really a stroke of genius on James Gunn’s part because out of all of the whacky and weird members of the Guardians, this particular team is dynamite on screen together. This isn’t to say that the Holiday Special doesn’t deliver its fair share of hilarity and mayhem with Rocket (Bradley Cooper), Nebula (Karen Gillan), and even an uncomfortably buff Groot (Vin Diesel)—because there are a handful of positively hilarious moments with the rest of the team—but this is Mantis and Drax’s movie.
Image via Disney+
Beyond the broad strokes that Gunn paints to connect the Holiday Special to the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe, this film feels none of the strain that the feature-length films suffer from. Whether you’ve watched the entire MCU catalog of films or only selectively chosen which ones to partake in, the Holiday Special easily stands on its own to deliver holiday cheer and the weirdness that comes from all of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. If kidnapping Kevin Bacon wasn’t enough of an outside-of-the-box idea for a superhero Christmas, then the epic soundtrack and musical interludes definitely set this one apart from the rest.
Beyond the absolutely brilliant inclusion of Kevin Bacon (which creates a few memorable moments!) Gunn uses the Holiday Special to deliver a major revelation about Mantis and Peter—one that has been alluded to in the past—and draws from one-off jokes about Bucky Barnes’ arm, among other blink-and-you-miss-it moments.
Image via Disney+
With Michael Giacchino’s Werewolf By Night and James Gunn’s The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, Marvel proves that creativity isn’t dying. There’s still a world of potential that exists in their universe, but in order to fully tap into that, they have to give creatives the power to create these weird and wonderful movies. As fun as it is to flip through the pages of a dark, gritty, depressing comic book, it’s equally as fun to snatch a one-shot from the shelves and enjoy a dozen pages of dazzling Christmas cheer from a bunch of aliens that have no reason to be celebrating such an earthly tradition.
If you’re looking for a little Christmas cheer, while still getting your Marvel fix, James Gunn has crafted an instant holiday classic with his funky little team of merry-making miscreants.
Final Verdict: A
