Movie · Phase 2

Guardians of the Galaxy

2014 · 121 min

Abducted from Earth the night his mother died in 1988, Peter Quill grows up a Ravager thief who calls himself Star-Lord and nobody else does. He steals an orb on Morag and discovers half the galaxy…

The Infinity SagaDisney+92%Released
Guardians of the Galaxy

The story

Abducted from Earth the night his mother died in 1988, Peter Quill grows up a Ravager thief who calls himself Star-Lord and nobody else does. He steals an orb on Morag and discovers half the galaxy wants it, including a Kree fanatic named Ronan who intends to use it to glass Xandar.

The orb contains the Power Stone. Four other criminals — an assassin, a maniac, a tree and a raccoon with a heavy-weapons habit — end up chained to Peter by circumstance, and the film's whole trick is letting five genuinely unpleasant people become a family without ever softening them.

Key facts

Release date
1 Aug 2014
Status
Released
Phase
Phase 2
Saga
The Infinity Saga
Runtime
121 min
Certificate
PG-13
Director
James Gunn
Writers
James Gunn, Nicole Perlman
Streaming
Disney+
Timeline placement
2014 — with a 1988 prologue on Earth

Cast

ActorRole
Chris PrattPeter Quill / Star-Lord
Zoe SaldañaGamora
Dave BautistaDrax the Destroyer
Bradley CooperRocket (voice)
Vin DieselGroot (voice)
Lee PaceRonan the Accuser
Karen GillanNebula

Characters

Gamora poster art

Gamora

Gamora Zen Whoberi Ben Titan

Easter eggs

  • Howard the Duck appears in the Collector's museum and speaks in the post-credits scene, twenty eight years after his own notorious 1986 film.
  • Cosmo the Spacedog, the telepathic Soviet space dog from Abnett and Lanning's comics, is in a containment cell in the Collector's vault.
  • A Dark Elf, a Chitauri and a Sakaaran are all visible among the Collector's specimens, tying three earlier films together.
  • Stan Lee cameos as a Xandarian ladies' man being chatted up, spotted through Rocket's scanner as they mock the locals.
  • Lloyd Kaufman, founder of Troma Entertainment where James Gunn began his career, cameos as a prisoner in the Kyln.
  • Rob Zombie voices the Ravager navigator over the ship's comms, a Gunn regular who has cameoed vocally in all three films.
  • The Nova Corps' uniforms, Xandar's design and Rhomann Dey's name all come directly from the Nova comics.
  • Yondu's arrow is controlled by whistling, an invention for the film that became the character's signature.

Trivia

  • James Gunn wrote the Awesome Mix songs into the screenplay and played them on set so performances would sync to the music.
  • Bradley Cooper recorded Rocket's voice separately; Gunn's brother Sean Gunn performed Rocket on set for eyelines and also plays Kraglin.
  • Vin Diesel recorded 'I am Groot' in more than a dozen languages for international releases.
  • Dave Bautista's Drax makeup took roughly four hours a day and used dozens of hand-applied prosthetic tattoos.
  • Marvel treated the film as its biggest gamble to date, greenlighting a talking raccoon two years before it was clear the MCU could survive a non-Avengers property.
  • Nicole Perlman wrote the first draft as part of Marvel's writing programme and shares screenplay credit.
  • Tyler Bates scored the film before shooting so Gunn could cut sequences to the music, reversing normal practice.

Box office

Budget
$170 million
Worldwide
$773.3 million
Domestic
$333.2 million

Reviews

Critics

92%

Guardians of the Galaxy is just as irreverent as fans of the frantic comic book would expect, and expands the Marvel universe with pure fun.

The MarvelGossips verdict

Marvel's best swing and its luckiest — a space-opera comedy that only works because Gunn treats five lunatics with total sincerity. Ronan is a nothing villain in a film that does not need one, because the conflict is entirely internal. The prison-break sequence and Groot's sacrifice are two of the five best scenes in the franchise.

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Frequently asked

What Infinity Stone is in the orb?
The Power Stone. The Guardians hand it to the Nova Corps for safekeeping on Xandar, which is where Thanos takes it in the opening minutes of Avengers: Infinity War.
Who is Peter Quill's father?
The film only teases that he is 'not of Terran origin'. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 reveals him as Ego, a Celestial — a change from the comics, where Quill's father is the Spartoi emperor J'son.
Is Howard the Duck MCU canon?
Yes. He appears in the post-credits scene, again in Vol. 2's Contraxia bar, in Endgame's final battle and in What If…?. Seth Green has voiced him since 2014.
Why does the soundtrack matter so much?
The Awesome Mix is Peter's only surviving link to his mother and to Earth. Gunn licensed the tracks before writing so they could be embedded in the story rather than dropped over it, and the album became the first soundtrack of entirely pre-existing songs to top the Billboard 200.
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