It's such an effervescent sequence, Peter there in the corner of a screen filled with fantastical scenery out of Flash Gordon, jiving to a hit single from 1974 on an obsolete electronics artifact. It sets the tone for what turns out to be an emphatically distinctive movie from director and co-writer James Gunn, but it also sets up the unusual tension that makes Guardians of the Galaxy work so well — it's a throwback sci-fi movie that exists in a universe in which the franchises it owes a debt to actually exist.

Guardians of the Galaxy summons the look and feel of space operas and comedies from the '70s and '80s like The Last Starfighter, Battle Beyond the Stars, Red Dwarf, and, of course, Star Wars, but it also gives us good reason to believe that Peter grew up watching those movies himself. He does look pretty happy jetting over crevices populated by giant space eels and wooing alien women of various shades of red and green, like a guy who, even though he was kidnapped, wasn't sorry to be lifted away from a scene of real emotional anguish on Earth to escape into epic interstellar adventures.

The mixtape wasn't a late addition to Guardians of the Galaxy. Gunn told BuzzFeed the idea of the Walkman was the first thing that came to him, and became the center of the story. "We're bringing a bunch of people into this weird, strange, wonderful, beautiful, colorful place, but that can be a little off-putting," said Gunn. "I felt like, for me, the music was a way to invite you in and make you feel a little more comfortable, because it's something we're familiar with in the face of all this oddness." The songs were written into the screenplay, and Dave Jordan, the music supervisor, was able to clear every track Gunn requested.