Marvel dropped the Guardians Of The Galaxy Holiday Special Trailer. There’s a whole bunch of Easter eggs and connections to what’s happening in Marvel Phase 4 and Marvel Phase 5 because Guardians of the Galaxy 3 is a Marvel Phase 5 Movie.
So we’ll break it all down; I’ll explain where this fits in the canon and in the timeline. Because it’s sort of like in between Marvel Phase 4 and Marvel Phase 5 at the end of this year in a couple of weeks, we won’t have to wait that long to actually get it.
This will just be a Holiday Special like the Werewolf By Night, so don’t expect it to be a full-fledged movie. And yeah, it will have that full-on James Gunn humor which is different, wired, yet funny.
Guardians Of The Galaxy Holiday Special Trailer Breakdown
The whole idea with the Guardians Of The Galaxy Holiday Special is that, as the name implies, it’s based on the Star Wars holiday special, which is very Infamous. It’s a big rite of passage as a Star Wars fan to watch the holiday special; if you can make it through the entire thing, you’re a champ.
That’s also why the Marvel special presentation intro scene is meant to look exactly like the CBS special presentation intro scene, like the logos are almost exactly the same. So it’s them doing that but with the Guardians of the Galaxy MCU characters in the MCU Universe.
It’s meant to take place right after the events of Thor Love and Thunder, after the Guardians of the Galaxy take off and Thor goes off on his own adventure, but before the events of Guardians of the Galaxy 3. In the Guardians of the Galaxy 3 trailer, we see Adam Warlock for the first time, and we also find out what happened to Gamora, which they’re talking about during this special holiday trailer.
Part of the plot is inspired by Peter Quill being so depressed that the Guardians want to cheer him up, and because it’s near Christmas and he throws a big Christmas party for a big Christmas celebration.
I’m assuming it’s about as long in length as the Werewolf By Night Special Presentation. Also, for reference, Werewolf By Night was so successful for Marvel because people loved it so much. They do have a lot of plans to do more of those types of special presentations, like one-offs, instead of doing the full Disney plus series or a full movie for every single character.
A really good example and cool connection to the Guardians of the Galaxy is Silver Surfer. They’ve talked about doing Silver Surfer as a special presentation a couple of months before the new Fantastic Four movie comes out in a couple of years.
Alpha Groot, Kevin Bacon, And Cosmo
Obviously, the real big things that we see during this trailer, at least, there are probably a couple of big surprises too, but we see the full-size version of Groot, Alpha Groot. I’ll talk about him in a second, but also real-life Kevin Bacon, like they’re canonizing Kevin Bacon to the MCU now. Real-life Kevin Bacon he’s not playing the Sebastian Shaw, X-Men First Class version of his character.
But this does canonize the X-Men films to the MCU. Because real-life Kevin Bacon is an actor who would have played that role in the X-Men film, the movies that that actor made are now Canon to the MCU. This is mostly about the Footloose reference from Avengers Infinity War.
The real big character that we see during this, although we’ve seen them before, is Cosmo, The Space Dog. But we’re actually gonna see them talk during this movie. I think the idea is that Cosmo also shows up during Guardians Of The Galaxy 3. But this will be the first time that we’ve heard her talk, so she’s a talking dog voiced by Maria Bakalova; you’ve probably seen her in a couple of other things recently.
In the MCU, in Marvel Comics, her backstory is that she’s a Russian space dog, and she’s based on a real-life Russian space dog Laika whom the Russians fired into space on a test flight in the 1950s. In the MCU, when she was sent to space, she was just mutated by cosmic rays and wound up Nowhere and then part of the collector’s collection.
Because this whole thing is that he collects all the unique things and really valuable things that he can find, that’s why he wanted to collect Groot as well, like anything unique that he could find, like “oh, you need to be part of my collection.” Obviously, she escaped when the collector was killed by Thanos.
Yondu Returns
The other real big surprise is that in the one sheet that Marvel released for this with like the entire cast, Michael Rooker was also listed in the cast. But they didn’t say if he’d be coming back in a version of Yondu either as a flashback or in some crazy twist in the present day. Or if he is in it as actual Michael Rooker in a Kevin Bacon kind of twist. Like real-life Kevin Bacon, maybe it’s real-life Michael Rooker, but I think it’s probably more of a Yondu twist.
I do not think that Chris Hemsworth is going to have a cameo as Thor. Like they’ll probably reference a little bit about what happened during Thor Love and Thunder just to reference the timeline a little bit. But obviously, this is meant to take place around the end of November, early December, near Christmas time, during this year in the MCU, and I believe it’s meant to be the year 2024 because that’s around the time when Thor Love and Thunder happens.
So this would just be like a little bit later that year this is happening. It is supposed to take place after the events of Black Panther Wakanda Forever. Black Panther Wakanda Forever is like the last major Marvel phase 4 movie, but this is sort of like a hanging thread at the end of Marvel phase four before the official beginning of Marvel Phase 5.
The official beginning of Marvel Phase 5 is Ant-Man And The Wasp Quantummania. I literally just did a trailer breakdown for that because it looks amazing, cannot wait to see King destroy Ant-Man, R.I.P Ant-Man.
Contraxia And Craglin
So just starting at the beginning of the trailer footage, though, they have the same type of intro that they had at the beginning of Werewolf By Night. Obviously, the difference is they’re not doing it in black and white, and it looks more like an actual Marvel Studios Production, a movie like you would expect in full color. They play Christmas music through the entire trailer just to highlight the actual season, like this is the Christmas season, basically. They call it the Holiday trailers because all the different religions have different holidays.
The planet that they start on, though, I believe is meant to be Contraxia which is sort of like the Ravager’s pleasure planet that they go to between their missions; they just hang out on all the time. Craglin becomes a much bigger character in this and during Guardians of the Galaxy 3. You also notice he’s wearing Yandu’s fin. The full fin, which he got at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy 2, he was wearing during Guardians of the Galaxy 3 as well. He still slowly figured out how to use it the way that Yondu did.
Same Costume Form Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 2
I think the reason why their costumes look a little bit more like Guardians of the Galaxy 2 in this Guardians Of The Galaxy Holiday Special Trailer it’s just because of the timing of when they filmed it, even though it’s meant to take place after Thor Love and Thunder.
One of the other big differences between this in Thor, Love, and Thunder, and the other Guardians of the Galaxy movies, is that a lot of it seems like it’s practical effects instead of just full special effects. Particularly the Alpha version of Groot, like the full-size version of Groot, he’s not full CG.
The comedy here comes from the fact that all the Guardians are mostly from alien planets, they don’t know a lot about Earth culture, so they’re trying to figure it out and try to cheer Peter Quill up.
They also had a joke about that when Craglin gave Peter Quill the Zune at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy 2. That was the present meant to be from Yondu, but the whole idea is that they thought that it was a really big deal. Like Yondu thought that it was this really huge deal that could hold all these songs, and Cracklin also thought that it was a really amazing thing. But in real life, Zune is this long-dead technology, basically.
Hollywood Boulevard
Some of the Christmas scenes and some of the decorations here are meant to take place on the Contraxia planet, and some of it is meant to take place on actual Earth on actual Hollywood Boulevard. Because they do actually travel to earth like, “what is going on here, this is so weird.” And it seems like what’s going on here is that it’s just Mantis and Drax that go back to planet Earth on a completely different ship; like this isn’t the usual Guardians’ ship, it’s a completely different ship.
Drax and Mantis go back to Earth to steal Kevin Bacon and bring him back to try and cheer Peter Quill up. But they’re basically kidnapping him like that’s the whole comedy. Like “are you the real-life Kevin Bacon? You need to come with us right now”. And if it wasn’t clear if you’ve never been to Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, California, this is the real Hollywood Boulevard, like James Gunn literally just filmed them walking around with everybody else in broad daylight.
This is very near to Man’s Chinese Theater and the theater across the street that Disney actually owns, where they hold a lot of their premieres. So on this street here, like right next to this block, is where Marvel has a lot of their movie premieres.
The Dance Off To Save The Christmas With Kevin Bacon
We see a scene in Contraxia; they just all l dressed up like Christmas. Then we see this scene where it seems like Drax and Mantis are having fun while they’re on planet Earth like they’re partying it up with a bunch of regular people. There’s also a Yarvo Easter egg in the background too during these scenes. Yarvo is actually the name of a director in real life who’s just really good friends with James Gunn, who he also produces movies for. I believe he’s also the person that directed Brightburn.
You notice when they’re celebrating Christmas on Contraxia they’re all wearing Christmas sweaters, and Drax is wearing the meme sweater of the cat with the laser eyes. We see the full-size version of Groot, so presumably, he’s grown to full size at some point. Maybe at the beginning of this, maybe they’ll have some joke about that during the actual holiday special. And they have the big joke about them going to steal Kevin Bacon, against his will, it seems like.
We don’t see any scenes of Kevin Bacon on actual Contraxia, but they might actually pay that off during the course of the special, like they actually do wind up stealing him and taking him to Contraxia.
It’ll be interesting to see what kind of dance-off joke they pay off when he shows up because that was the whole thing with Peter Quill. “You mean like Footloose, oh exactly like Footloose,” referencing the dance-off at the end of the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Because that’s what happened at the end of the Footloose movie, the whole joke was is they had a big dance-off at the end of Footloose. So maybe, maybe, a small chance of Kevin Bacon and Peter Quill dancing at the end of this somehow.
Gamora, The Revengers Leader
As far as I know, though, Gamora is not going to be in this. They’ll probably just reference her, but we do actually know what happened to Gamora because of the Guardians of the Galaxy 3 trailer they released. She is now the de facto leader of the Ravagers like she’s filled the power vacuum, and I believe it’s meant to be a big surprise for Peter Quill and the other Guardians at the beginning of the Guardians of Galaxy 3.
Like at the beginning of the movie, they go to Doc with a Dark Easter, and the ravagers are still using the piece of it that survived; part of it was blown up, but not all of the ship. And when the door opens, they pull all their guns on them, and the big reveal is that the leader that they’re there to meet is Gamora; she walks through, and they’re all surprised like Peter Quill can’t believe it. So it’s like Gamora has gone full Thanos, sort of taking over her own small slice of territory. But it’s the ravagers this time, and she’s acting more like a space pirate like you would expect the ravagers to.
So one of the ongoing plot lines is their sort of winning Gamora back to the family, so to speak, the Guardians of the Galaxy because she’s a completely different version of the character who had none of those experiences with them from the first film.
The other big storyline next to Adam Warlock obviously is the high evolutionary, and I believe he’s meant to be the person who created a Rocket. But the big news here, as I said, is that the holiday special is coming out on November 25th. We just got that Ant-Man 3 trailer, so there’ll probably be a couple of other trailers before the end of the year as well too.
Also Read: Ant-Man And The Wasp Quantummania Trailer Breakdown: Kang Has Killed A Lot Of Avengers Variants
