Peter “Star-Lord” Quill is a lover of many icons of 80s pop culture, but one of his biggest heroes is Kevin Bacon. The Guardians of the Galaxy have made a bunch of references to the legendary actor across the MCU so far, specifically in conjunction with Quill’s opinion that Footloose is forever the greatest movie ever made. But what does Kevin Bacon himself make of these tongue-in-cheek yet affectionate name-checks?
While speaking ComicBook.com, Bacon revealed that he was thrilled to find out he was mentioned in Guardians of the Galaxy when he first went to see it in the theater, saying:
“Well, I mean, there was the mention in Guardians which I thought was pretty amazing,” the actor said. “I didn’t really know anything about it and then I went and sat in the movie theater and somebody just said to me, ‘Have you seen that movie yet?’ I said, ‘No, I’m going but I haven’t seen it yet.’ I’m sitting in the movie theater and I’m thinking, ‘Wow, that’s some shout out!'”
For evidence that Bacon had a great time with the movie, here’s his tweet from back in 2014, which makes a fun reference to 2010’s Super, the film that Bacon made with Guardians director James Gunn. No doubt their previous collaboration is why Gunn dropped some nods to his friend into the script.
Hey @JamesGunn Just out of #GuardiansOfTheGalaxy it's nothing short of #Super IMHO
— Kevin Bacon (@kevinbacon) August 2, 2014
Bacon then went on to recall working on Super, the cult favorite superhero comedy starring Rainn Wilson and Ellen Page, and how he was happy to accept his role in that after it was turned down by none other than Jean-Claude Van Damme.
“I did a movie with James Gunn. It was a movie that he did before he started that series. It was a tiny, tiny little movie and we were in Shreveport, Louisiana,” Bacon recalls. “A movie with Rainn Wilson. “It was a part that apparently he had originally had Jean-Claude Van Damme. Jean-Claude fell out for some reason. James called me and I had been a fan of this movie Slither than he had made. He said, ‘Hey, you wanna come do this part?’ I said, ‘Take Jean-Claude Van Damme’s sloppy seconds? Definitely.'”
Bacon himself is no stranger to the comic book movie genre, of course, having played Sebastian Shaw in 2011’s X-Men: First Class. It would be strange if he played another character in the MCU though, given that it’s established he exists in the Marvel universe, but he could turn up as himself in the next Guardians of the Galaxy, or in a weird shapeshifting cameo like David Hasselhoff’s in Vol. 2. Make it happen, James Gunn!