Film guide · 2014
The whole film, start to finish, told scene by scene in words. Read this and you'll know everything that happens.
Contains every spoiler, up to the ending.
1988, Missouri. Young Peter Quill is at his mother Meredith's bedside as she dies. She reaches for his hand, but overwhelmed, he can't take it and runs outside, still holding her last gift, unopened.
As he cries in the field, a spaceship descends and beams him away.
Twenty-six years later, Peter is a space outlaw calling himself Star-Lord. Dancing to his mother's mixtape on a ruined planet, he steals a silver sphere, the Orb.
Agents of Ronan, a fanatical warrior who wants the Orb, show up, and Peter barely escapes. Yondu, the Ravager boss who raised Peter, is furious he took the job alone and puts a bounty on him.
On the peaceful planet Xandar, Peter tries to sell the Orb. Assassin Gamora tries to steal it, and bounty hunters Rocket, a raccoon, and Groot, a tree, try to grab Peter. The brawl gets them all arrested.
The four are sent to a space prison, where Drax, a giant whose family was killed by Ronan, tries to kill Gamora for working for Ronan. Peter stops him. Gamora actually plans to betray Ronan.
Following Rocket's plan, the five break out. Peter risks everything to go back for his confiscated cassette player.
Ronan is working with Thanos, a powerful warlord. Gamora and another assassin, Nebula, are Thanos's adopted daughters.
They take the Orb to the Collector, who gathers rare things from across the universe. Inside the Orb is an Infinity Stone with the power to destroy whole worlds.
When the Collector's assistant grabs the stone, it causes a massive explosion. Gamora decides they can't sell something this dangerous.
A drunk Drax calls Ronan to come fight him. Drax is beaten, Gamora is thrown into space, and Peter gives her his mask, ready to die beside her.
Yondu rescues them. Ronan takes the Orb, puts the stone in his hammer, betrays Thanos, and sets out to destroy Xandar.
Peter asks the others to do something good for once in their lives. The five unite and, with Yondu and Xandar's forces, head for Ronan's warship.
As the warship crashes, Groot spreads his branches into a protective shell around his friends. "We are Groot," he says, and shields them with his body.
As Ronan is about to destroy the planet, Peter starts singing and dancing to distract him. In that moment, his friends destroy the hammer.
Peter grabs the stone. It starts to tear him apart, but Gamora, Drax and Rocket take hold of his hands, and together they share its power and destroy Ronan.
Peter hands Yondu what looks like the Orb, but has swapped what's inside. The real stone goes to Xandar's Nova Corps for safekeeping.
Peter learns his father wasn't human. Then he opens his mother's gift, untouched for 26 years: a new mixtape and a letter.
A twig of Groot planted in a pot grows into a tiny Groot who dances to the music. The five set off as the Guardians of the Galaxy.
In the Collector's wrecked museum, a space dog and a talking duck relax among the debris.