Director James Gunn shared a photo of himself and the Guardians of the Galaxy cast to celebrate the movie’s seventh anniversary on Sunday. The photo shows Gunn with cast members Zoe Saldana (Gamora), Chris Pratt (Star-Lord), Karen Gillan (Nebula), and Dave Bautista (Drax).

Gunn wrote with the photo, “Holy cow. #GuardiansoftheGalaxy opened 7 years ago today. Amazing.”

Guardians of the Galaxy, released on August 1, 2014, was the tenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The movie introduced to cinema lovers one of the most obscure groups of characters in Marvel Comics. Made up of fugitives and criminals from different parts of the universe, the team had to stop Ronan the Accuser from acquiring a powerful object called the Orb (later revealed to be the Power Stone, one of the Infinity Stones). The film brought a distinctive aesthetic and retro musical sensibility to the MCU. The motley bunch of weird and even pathetic characters were one of the biggest strengths of the film. It was in the first film that Thanos appeared for the first time during the runtime of a film instead of post-credits.

Guardians of the Galaxy received highly positive reviews. It scored 92 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes. The critical consensus read, “Guardians of the Galaxy is just as irreverent as fans of the frequently zany Marvel comic would expect — as well as funny, thrilling, full of heart, and packed with visual splendor.”

Dave Bautista recently revealed that Guardians of the Galaxy changed his life. He told IGN, “For people to really understand how much my life has changed, they would have to understand where I came from, what I went through when I was in wrestling, what I left behind to take a chance on going into acting. And when I got the role of Drax in Guardians, I barely worked in three years.”

He added, “My life just got better and I just became more successful. And that’s when things really just started to seem like surreal. It wasn’t many years [earlier] when I was just like borrowing money to pay for food, pay for rent. Borrow money to buy my kids Christmas presents. It wasn’t long before all that stuff [had happened]. So it happened for me fast, which made it seem even that much more surreal. But it did, it changed my life. It gave me a life.”

Meanwhile, James Gunn’s DC movie The Suicide Squad is set to be released on August 5 in India.