Guardians of the GalaxySave

We open in a hospital corridor on Earth, 1988. Young Peter Quill watches his mother die of cancer. He runs outside in grief — and is immediately abducted by a passing spaceship belonging to a crew of intergalactic thieves called the Ravagers, led by a blue-skinned Yondu Udonta. Cut to: twenty-six years later. Peter Quill is now a Ravager himself, going by the self-styled nickname 'Star-Lord,' which nobody else uses. He has just stolen a mysterious metallic orb from an abandoned planet, and the entire galaxy seems to want it.

The orb is a contracted retrieval job for an extremist warlord named Ronan the Accuser. Quill's attempt to sell it on the trading hub of Xandar puts him in three-way contact with: Gamora — a green-skinned assassin sent to retrieve it for Ronan; Rocket — a bioengineered raccoon with a militaristic personality; and Groot — a tree-creature with a three-word vocabulary. The four of them fight, are arrested by Nova Corps police, and are sent to the orbital prison Kyln. There they meet Drax the Destroyer, who wants to kill Ronan because Ronan murdered his family. Five strangers, one prison cell, one Macguffin.

They break out of the Kyln by working together — Quill, Gamora, Rocket, Drax, and Groot — and sell the orb to a creature called the Collector on the mining colony of Knowhere. The Collector reveals the orb contains an Infinity Stone — the Power Stone, one of six cosmic singularities that can destroy entire planets when wielded with intent. Ronan, after killing the Collector's assistant in a Stone-handling accident, decides to skip the Thanos handoff and use the Stone to commit galactic genocide himself.

Star-Lord, in possibly his most heroic moment, sells the team out for a moment — but doesn't really, and rejoins the team — but really really doesn't trust them — and finally commits to working with them to stop Ronan. The team flies to Xandar in a stolen Ravager ship. Yondu and his crew arrive to capture Quill. Ronan arrives to wipe out Xandar with the Stone. The final battle takes place across the air space above Xandar and the surface of Xandar's capital. The Guardians work together — for the first time as a true team — to bring Ronan's flagship down.

Ronan crashes his flagship onto Xandar's capital with the Stone in his hand. He prepares to detonate. Star-Lord throws himself in front of Ronan and starts dancing — a deliberate strategic distraction borrowed from a 1980s pop dance routine. Ronan freezes, baffled. The pause gives Gamora and Rocket enough time to break Ronan's grip. Quill grabs the exposed Stone with one hand — and survives, because the team grips his arm together, sharing the cosmic energy across all five of them. They blast Ronan to atoms with the redistributed Stone-energy. Groot dies in the process, sacrificing himself to shield the others from the crash.

Yondu accepts the orb back from Quill (containing what Yondu thinks is the real Power Stone, but is actually a wooden hand-carved replacement). The team buries Groot. From the broken stump in his pot, a tiny new sapling sprouts — Baby Groot, dancing to ELO's 'Mr. Blue Sky.' The Guardians fly off in a repaired ship: a band of misfits who, for the first time in their lives, have a family.

Guardians of the Galaxy grossed $773 million globally — a stunning success for a film featuring no recognizable characters to mainstream audiences. It made Marvel comfortable taking risks on obscure properties (which led to Doctor Strange, Ant-Man, and eventually Black Panther). James Gunn would go on to write and direct Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017), Vol. 3 (2023), and ultimately be hired as co-CEO of DC Studios in 2022.