Each year Christmas comes for us all. It comes to the straits and the squares and to broken people. Maybe especially to broken people.
It starts with one of the great Christmas songs of all time. Fairytale of New York. Which begins with
it was Christmas Eve babe
In the drunk tank
The lyrics get better and worse from there. It tells the story of a New York City romance in the gutter. And of a hosts of Christmas that can’t fix a broken couple.
The boys of the NYPD choir
Still singing Galway Bay
And the bells are ringing out
For Christmas day
In the title scene there is a new Christmas song, written just for the show. And like You are a mean one, Mr. Grinch, it’s an instant classic.
So right off the bat I was exceptionally happy with how things were going. If anyone is going to deliver a Christmas musical with superheroes then writer/director James Gunn is the person I would put my faith in.
It didn’t have to be much more than silly but it has a strong emotional core and an appealing message.
I wasn’t expecting to cry as much as I did. But I’m an old guy with sons and there is a bit of business in there with Yondu, and the special hits that father-son Christmas dynamic like Santa ringing a bell.
I love the first set of Marvel movies. I think Avengers is the first one to prove that they could really make this thing work. And when I make my lists it’s normally at the top.
But of all of them Guardians of the Galaxy is the one that maybe means the most to me.
Because it’s funny. Because it blends Marvel’s great weird comics with cinema style and Tarantino’s taste for needle drops. And because it’s about broken people.
We’ve had a sequel, an Infinity War, an Endgame, a cameo in a Thor movie and soon we’ll have a third movie and an ending to Gunn’s collection of science fiction superheroes.
But right now we got a Christmas special. It is both true to the spirit of the great classic Christmas specials and true to Marvel Comics.
Marvel used to do this thing called assistant editors month. There would be warnings on the covers because the stories that month were going to be exceptionally weird.
Weird like Aunt May and Franklin Richard’s battling Galactus. Weird like all of the Avengers being guests on the Late Show with David Letterman.
Weird like two of the Guardians kidnapping Kevin Bacon to bring him to Peter Quill because it’s Christmas and Peter is sad.
Kevin is Earth’s greatest hero, Peter says so, and after what happened to Gamora in Endgame Peter is having a tough time.
So his family helps him out. They help him have a great Christmas. Christmas in space, Christmas in the drunk tank. Christmas for the broken people and the fathers and sons who have trouble sometimes living with each other.
You hear it? The bells are ringing out on Christmas Day.
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