Guardians of the Galaxy (2014): Cast, Characters and Plot

The full story of Guardians of the Galaxy starts with a loss: in 1988, Peter Quill is abducted from Earth by Yondu's Ravagers right after his mother dies. In 2014 he steals the orb on the planet Morag and is attacked by Ronan's men, and Yondu puts a bounty on him. Ronan sends Gamora to take the orb, so Quill carries it to Xandar to sell it, only for Gamora to steal it there while Rocket and Groot join the brawl.

The Nova Corps jail all four in the Kyln, where the grieving warrior Drax tries to kill Gamora. Gamora reveals that she has turned on Ronan and plans to sell the orb to the Collector, which gives the group a reason to escape together in Quill's ship, the Milano. At Knowhere the Collector opens the orb and shows that it holds an Infinity Stone. His servant grabs the stone and causes an explosion, after which Ronan arrives, takes the stone and defeats Drax.

Gamora's sister Nebula destroys her ship, but Yondu rescues Gamora and Quill, and Quill talks the others into a truce. Ronan fits the stone into his warhammer and heads to Xandar to destroy it, with Nebula at his side. The Guardians, the Ravagers and the Nova Corps attack Ronan's flagship, which crashes on Xandar, and Groot sacrifices himself to shield the group from the crash.

In the finale, Quill distracts Ronan while Drax and Rocket destroy the hammer. Quill then grabs the stone and, with his friends sharing its burden, uses it to destroy Ronan.

The ending of Guardians of the Galaxy settles who the team is and where the Infinity Stone goes, and it leaves two questions for later films. Quill tricks Yondu with a fake stone and hands the real one to the Nova Corps, so the stone leaves the hands of thieves and returns to an official keeper. The Guardians' criminal records are wiped, which is the film's way of turning five outlaws into a crew with a clean slate.

In my opinion, the quietest beat is the strongest one. Quill learns that his father belonged to an ancient unknown species, a line that plants a mystery instead of answering one, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 picks it up when Ego says he is Peter Quill's father. Then Quill opens a last gift from his mother, a cassette of her favorite songs, which ties the story back to the 1988 prologue where he was taken from Earth.

The team leaves in a rebuilt Milano with a cutting from Groot, which grows into a baby Groot. It could be argued that this is the smartest move in the script, because it keeps a character who sacrificed himself in the cast without undoing the sacrifice. Perhaps it is also the most marketable choice, but the film earns it by making Groot the one who shields the group.

The bigger point is the stone. After the street level politics of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, set in Washington, D.C., this film tells viewers that the Infinity Stones matter across the universe. In Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Thanos is hunting the six Infinity Stones, and both Zoe Saldaña's Gamora and Karen Gillan's Nebula are in the cast. Readers who want the stones explained can go to the infinity stones page.

Guardians of the Galaxy has one post credit scene, and it returns to the Collector. He sits in his wrecked archive with only two surviving exhibits, a cosmonaut dog and an anthropomorphic duck.

The scene is a punchline rather than a plot setup, and it follows from the explosion at Knowhere, where the Collector's servant grabs the Infinity Stone. Benicio del Toro plays the Collector, who is the keeper of that archive in the film.