The 10 Best Real Movies That Exist In The MCU

Marvel Studios’ latest streaming release, The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, called back to a fan-favorite running gag from the first movie. Drax and Mantis set out to restore Quill’s holiday spirit by flying to Earth, breaking into the home of Footloose star Kevin Bacon, and bringing him back as a Christmas spirit. Back in the first Guardians movie, Quill galvanized his ragtag band of space outlaws with the legend of Footloose.

The Bacon-starring pillar of dance cinema is just one of many classic movies from the real world that’s been confirmed to exist in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. From The Big Lebowski to The Empire Strikes Back, some of the greatest movies ever made canonically exist in the MCU.

In the first Guardians of the Galaxy film, Peter Quill tells Gamora about the Earth legend known as Footloose, and recounts the plot of the classic ‘80s dance movie: “A great hero named Kevin Bacon teaches an entire city full of people with sticks up their butts that dancing, well, it’s the greatest thing there is.” During the final battle, Gamora gleefully exclaims, “We’re just like Kevin Bacon!”

The reason the joke works so well is that, at its core, Footloose is a pitch-perfect take on the traditional “hero’s journey,” with a plucky everyman standing up to an oppressive authority.

9/10 Point Break (1991)

When the God of Thunder finds the Quinjet that the Hulk rode to Sakaar in Thor: Ragnarok, he’s insulted to learn that Tony Stark made his password “Point Break” in reference to Kathryn Bigelow’s high-octane action thriller of the same name. Tony is comparing Thor’s appearance to Patrick Swayze’s zen, shaggy-haired surfer/bank robber Bodhi from the movie.

On paper, the premise of an undercover FBI agent abandoning his duties because he’s become enamored by a career criminal sounds too absurd to work, but Swayze’s tangible chemistry with Keanu Reeves makes it work.

8/10 Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)

John Hughes’ brand of high school-based comedy was a huge influence on the cinematic style of Spider-Man: Homecoming. In one of Homecoming’s earliest action sequences, Jon Watts directly homages Hughes’ classic teen comedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Spidey runs through a series of backyards to take a shortcut in a chase with the Vulture’s goons, much like Ferris takes a shortcut through some backyards so he can make it home before his parents. Watts lays on the homage pretty thick when this exact scene can be spotted playing on a TV in one of the backyards.

7/10 Rocky (1976)

The list that Steve Rogers compiles to help him catch up on all the pop culture he missed while he was frozen includes Rocky. Rocky Balboa was the breakout role of Sylvester Stallone, who has since joined the MCU itself in the minor role of Stakar Ogord.

With his Rocky script, Stallone singlehandedly created the underdog sports movie formula that has since been copied countless times. He became the third filmmaker to be Oscar-nominated for writing and starring in the same movie after Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles.

6/10 The Big Lebowski (1998)

When Tony Stark is passing a drunken Thor with sunglasses, loose-fitting clothes, and an unkempt beard in Avengers: Endgame, he quips, “One side there, Lebowski.” Tony is drawing a parallel between Thor’s new look and “The Dude” from The Big Lebowski, which is interesting because Tony’s first on-screen villain (Obadiah Stane, still one of the MCU’s best Iron Man villains) was played by the Dude himself, Jeff Bridges.

The Coen brothers’ stoner comedy noir wasn’t a box office success on its initial release, but it’s since become one of the cornerstones of cult cinema.

5/10 The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

In the thrilling airport battle sequence in the middle of Captain America: Civil War, Spider-Man proposes tripping up Giant-Man by slinging webs around his enlarged ankles, with a nod to the AT-AT scene from “that really old movie Empire Strikes Back.”

The bombshell twist ending of Avengers: Infinity War is often compared to The Empire Strikes Back. With Empire and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, George Lucas pioneered the subversive technique of going darker and grimmer in the sequels.

4/10 The Godfather (1972)

There’s a poster for Francis Ford Coppola’s seminal crime epic The Godfather hanging up on the wall of Shang-Chi’s apartment. When it first hit theaters, The Godfather briefly held the record for highest-grossing movie ever made, which would eventually be broken by Marvel’s own Avengers: Endgame.

Al Pacino secured his screen legend status with his career-best performance as quintessential antihero Michael Corleone in Coppola’s dark deconstruction of the American Dream.

3/10 Back To The Future (1985)

When the Hulk explains that it’s impossible to change the future by going into the past, Scott Lang is disheartened to learn that “Back to the Future is a bunch of bulls***.” Robert Zemeckis’ meticulously crafted time-traveling comedy was recently named as a perfect movie by Quentin Tarantino.

Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd’s endlessly watchable on-screen dynamic carries this carefully plotted tale of a teenager going back in time and having to ensure his parents get together.

2/10 Aliens (1986)

When Spidey rips open the spaceship to save Doctor Strange from Ebony Maw in Avengers: Infinity War, he makes a reference to another really old movie: Aliens. At the end of James Cameron’s super-sized sequel, Sigourney Weaver’s iconic action heroine Ellen Ripley sends the xenomorph queen out into the depths of space via an airlock.

While the Ridley Scott original is hailed as an untouchable masterpiece of horror cinema, Cameron managed to satisfy fans with a more action-packed sequel that matched its predecessor’s intensity and multiplied its monster.

1/10 Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981)

In the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, Peter Quill describes the MacGuffin – the Orb, housing the Power Stone – by referencing three other famous movie MacGuffins, saying it has “a real shiny blue suitcase, Ark of the Covenant, Maltese Falcon sort of vibe.” The suitcase is from The Big Empty, the Maltese Falcon is, of course, from The Maltese Falcon, and the Ark is from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Raiders is the pitch-perfect action-adventure masterpiece that introduced the world to Indiana Jones. It was one of the early pioneers of the brand of escapist summer blockbuster that the MCU has monopolized.

NEXT: 10 Ways Raiders Of The Lost Ark Still Holds Up Today