It is not unusual for music featured in a TV show to gain a large following and go on to have a life outside the show it appears in. This could be the case with Kevin Bacon’s duet with Old 97’s, which made its debut as part of the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. The song “Here It Is Christmastime” delivered an instant feel-good festive tune to the Marvel Special Presentation on Disney+. This weekend it broke out into the real world with Bacon and Old 97’s performing live on the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. After the performance, James Gunn took to his Twitter account to share the video, which he commented made his heart “grow three sizes.”
The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special has delivered a brilliant festive special from the MCU, becoming one of the highest-rated Marvel projects ever. Among the many attributes of the Guardians Holiday Special, the addition of fan-favorite Kevin Bacon was a stroke of genius that paid off a long-standing MCU joke and allowed the actor to flex his vocal cords. Bacon recently talked about joining the MCU as a fictional version of himself and really enjoyed just being able to have fun. He said:
“Listen, I love to do that kind of stuff. To me, movies are this giant playground. I get to play and a grown man gets to just goof around and have fun. I take the work very seriously, but in the case of something like ‘Guardians,’ you have to stop sometimes and go, ‘Oh, s- -t, this is really cool!’ I got a really, really fun gig.”
Will James Gunn Go Out on a High With Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3?
James Gunn has had a pretty flawless run with Marvel Studios. The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special has delivered some of his best reviews so far, and the question now is whether Gunn can end his perfect run with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3. The recently released first trailer for next summer’s movie has set up a fun, action-packed but very emotional end to the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy. Gunn previously said of his final Guardians movie:
“Vol. 3 has a lot of the fun and the goofy stuff of Guardians, but it's also incredibly emotional. It's the end of the story for this group of Guardians, so there was a lot of emotion around it. It was very serious a lot of the time. The actors were all pushing themselves a lot, especially Chris Pratt. It was heavy. A lot of Vol. 3 is going back to the beginning so that we can really see the end. We see the importance of Rocket's character and who he is. It was just important to me that it worked and that I did everything I possibly could for the sake of these characters and for the fans. So, I put my all into it.”
Every Marvel release comes with the expectation of being better and bigger than the last. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 could provide James Gunn with his perfect Marvel ending, even if that means there will not be a happy ending for all of the team.