A quiet boy lives a normal life until something inside him starts to change. At first, it’s small, strange strength, faster reflexes—but then the transformation takes over. He becomes something powerful, something no one can stop. Now, the world sees him as a threat… but he never asked for any of it.

‘SPOILER ALERT’

During a demonstration to show the capabilities of a new set of military robots, the soldiers in the control room suddenly notice that something is wrong. Before they can do anything, the robots blow up some nearby trucks and eventually kill everyone in the control room. Just then, a man named Kuratov shows up at the scene and controls the robots to follow him.

The next day, a General named Dolgov arranges a meeting with some military officials in the country. During the meeting, Dolgov looks disappointed as he talks about what happened at the test site. He adds that the accident has made him feel the need to tell them about a secret organization called Patriot.

As everyone keeps listening to him, Dolgov mentions that a few years earlier, Patriot was a highly classified program aimed at conducting a series of tests to alter the DNA of humans and animals to give them superpowers. Interestingly, Kuratov happened to be one of the scientists who worked on the project, but his experiment, called Module 1, failed to produce results that impressed his superiors. Another professor named Viktor delivered the best results for the project, and Kuratov felt disappointed because he was so far behind.

Since he had to do something extraordinary to be recognized as a great scientist, Kuratov stole the results of Viktor’s work and began to carry out secret experiments, which involved using humans as test subjects. The military eventually got to know about Kuratov’s illegal experiments, and they sent some men to arrest him and close down his lab. When the soldiers got there, Kuratov blew up his lab but still managed to survive.

His body then gets exposed to some toxic chemicals which alter his body’s genetic structure. This gives him great strength and grants him the powers of a cyborg, who can generate electricity and control machines. Dolgov then tells the soldiers at the meeting that Kuratov used his powers to take control of the robots during the previous day’s demonstration.

He adds that their troops can’t stop him, and that there’s only one way to track Kuratov down and defeat him. As everyone wonders what he’s talking about, Dolgov mentions that the victims from the experiment Kuratov conducted must be found and persuaded to help the country because they’re the only ones who can stop the rogue scientist. Elsewhere, Kuratov breaks into a military facility and uses his powers to start all the trucks and lead them out to begin his grand plan.

After a while, Dolgov takes a Major named Elena to the headquarters of the Patriot Organization. When they get there, Dolgov puts her in charge of searching the entire Soviet Union to find the victims of the experiment so she can form a team of superheroes who can take down Kuratov. Elena immediately accepts the mission, and as she asks Dolgov for the name of the team, he says she can call them Guardians.

Shortly after, Elena starts working with some agents to find the location of the victims Dolgov talked about. After the agents come up with a way to narrow down their search, they inform Elena that they already know the location of one of the victims, whose name is Ler. The next day, after Ler finishes praying at a temple, he comes outside, only to see Elena, who introduces herself as the new leader of the Patriot Organization.

Ler doesn’t seem too happy to hear this, and he lifts some rocks with his hands while asking if she wants to take advantage of him. Elena says it’s not what she wants, and that she’d like to offer him a chance to get revenge. Ler says he’s no longer that kind of person, and that all his enemies are dead, but Elena mentions that Kuratov is still alive.

As Ler hears Kuratov’s name, he looks shocked and tells Elena that he’s interested in joining her team. Elsewhere, a man named Khan stands in the middle of nowhere and awaits the arrival of some men who want to kill him. As they get close to him with their cars, Khan moves quite fast and uses his curved swords to kill all the men and their boss.

Just then, Ler shows up at the scene and tells Khan that he’s sure the men deserved what happened to them. As Khan looks shocked to see him, Ler invites him to join the Guardians so they can destroy Kuratov and ensure that he gets what he deserves. Khan looks interested because he was one of Kuratov’s victims, who now has superspeed and the ability to fight well with swords.

After he agrees to join the team, Khan and Ler lead Elena and some soldiers to the house of another victim named Arsus, who can transform into a bear. Just as they arrive, Arsus attacks the soldiers but eventually stops when he sees Khan and Ler. As they then invite him to join their team so they can fight together like they used to, Arsus agrees, and Elena mentions that there’s one more person they need for the team to be complete.

Shortly after, a lady named Kseniya performs at an event where she enters a pool of water and becomes invisible. After her performance, she heads to the dressing room and sees Khan inside. Kseniya is shocked by this, and she immediately attacks him. She appears to be quite good at fighting, but she’s unable to land a huge blow on Khan, who seems quite relaxed. As she stops for a while, Khan asks if she would’ve been nicer to him if he brought her flowers.

Kseniya doesn’t understand this, and he tells her to try hard to remember him. Kseniya says she doesn’t know who he is, but before he says anything else, Ler shows up to try to make her remember who he is. Kseniya also doesn’t recognize him, and as she attacks him, he defends himself and mentions that he’s the one who taught her the moves she’s currently using. Before the fight escalates, Arsus shows up and tells Kseniya that they all know each other. He adds that Kseniya still looks the same as 40 years ago because she hasn’t changed.

Before Kseniya can say anything, Arsus says he knows she has no friends, and that she’s just a loner with powers. Kseniya looks shocked by this because he really knows her, and Arsus mentions that he, Khan, and Ler are just like her. He then asks if Kseniya isn’t even curious to know how she got her powers, but she just stays silent and doesn’t know what to do.

Elsewhere, Kuratov enters a room filled with cryo chambers containing troops he created and plans to unleash to start a war. As he stares at them, Kuratov says he has been waiting for many years to take over the world, and that no one will be able to stop him with his troops. Meanwhile, Kseniya meets Elena and talks about how she lost her memory many years ago.

She adds that doctors couldn’t explain what happened to her, and that she only knew her name because it was engraved on a ring on her finger. She also mentions that she eventually discovered that it was part of her powers to never grow old. As Elena and the others keep listening to her, Kseniya says she couldn’t be around people for long because they got curious about her condition.

Arsus then asks what else she can do aside from staying young, and Kseniya says she can regulate her body temperature and become invisible underwater. The team looks impressed by this, and Elena asks if Kseniya would like to join the Guardians. Kseniya immediately accepts the offer and mentions that she hopes working with them and doing something good with her powers will help her regain her memory.

Just then, Dolgov enters the room and informs them that his men have tracked down some of the tanks stolen by Kuratov. Since it’s also where they’ll find him, Dolgov tells the team that they need to move quickly before Kuratov realizes that they’ve figured out his location. Following this, the Guardians head to a junkyard where Kuratov and his men are staying.

As Arsus looks around, he sees that there are guards everywhere, but Kseniya and the others don’t seem bothered by this. After they enter the rain and head separate ways to look for Kuratov, Ler uses his comms to ask Elena what she can see from the surveillance cameras in the area. As she’s about to respond, the signal goes off, and Elena is unable to communicate with the team.

Ler finds this suspicious, but he still keeps moving around to find Kuratov. Meanwhile, Arsus transforms into a bear-man, and Kseniya also becomes invisible while walking in the rain. Before she goes too far, though, one of the guards sees her through his infrared glasses and alerts his colleagues.

As Kseniya notices that the men are looking at her, she tries to run away, but they shoot her with a chemical that freezes her body. Elsewhere, Arsus and Khan come up against some of Kuratov’s guards and beat them up quite well. After a while, though, someone injects Khan with a serum that knocks him out, and Arsus is also captured with a net.

Ler remains the only Guardian standing, and he uses his powers to lift up rocks and attack Kuratov’s guards. He also glues some of the rocks to his body, and this makes him hard to beat. After he defeats all the guards in his way, Kuratov suddenly shows up behind him.

Ler immediately runs toward him to attack him, but Kuratov knocks him down. Ler still tries to stand up to fight, but nothing he does seems to work on Kuratov, who eventually injures him and leaves him in pain. Elsewhere, Elena is unaware of what has happened to the Guardians, and she keeps urging her team to fix the signal problem.

Shortly after, Arsus, Khan, and Kseniya are caged in a cell with a magnetic force field. As they look pissed about being captured, Kuratov shows up and says it’s nice to see them again. The Guardians quickly stand together to confront him, but Kuratov says he can’t believe they’ve forgotten that he knows their weaknesses.

Arsus then tells Kuratov to let Kseniya go because she can’t even remember who he is. Kuratov doesn’t seem to care, and he says he has no plans to kill them yet because he would like them to join his team. Arsus rejects the offer, and Khan also mentions that he would rather die than work for Kuratov.

Kseniya also supports them, and even though Kuratov is pissed by this, he tells them that they still have 24 hours to make a proper decision. As he then walks away, he tells them to make a good decision because he might no longer need them when he’s back. Following this, Kuratov heads outside and uses his powers to control some battle tanks out of a military facility.

He then leads his troops, robots, and battle tanks toward Moscow in search of a space transmitter. All the citizens are immediately told to leave the city because the military has announced that they can’t do anything against Kuratov’s massive army. Meanwhile, Elena leads some soldiers to the junkyard, and they find Ler lying lifeless on the ground.

Elena looks worried and immediately gets Ler taken to the Patriot headquarters. Much later, Ler wakes up, and as Elena asks if he’s fine, he tells her that when he passed out, he saw his late daughter and relived the moment she died. As she feels sorry for him, a soldier enters the room to inform Elena that there’s a professor waiting to see her.

Elena looks confused, but as she heads outside, she sees Viktor. He then tells her that when he saw what happened on the news, he knew he had to come. Elena says she already helped form the Guardians to take Kuratov down, but that he has injured Ler badly and likely killed the others. Viktor says it’s unlikely that Kuratov has killed the others because he might want them to work for him. He adds that he knows where they’re possibly being held because years ago, Kuratov invited him to his secret lab to flaunt the success of his project.

As he directs her to where the lab is located, Elena asks if he can take care of Ler while she leads her team to save Arsus, Khan, and Kseniya. Viktor says he can, and Elena gets her team ready to move to the lab. Elsewhere, Kuratov stops his troops at the city center where a space transmitter is located.

As he tells his troops to bring it down, Dolgov shows up at the scene and tells Kuratov that he shouldn’t be destroying the transmitter or making things get out of hand. Dolgov adds that he delivered the Guardians to him as promised, and that he wants Kuratov to fulfill his end of the deal by stopping the chaos. Kuratov doesn’t seem to care about everything Dolgov said, and he remains focused on cutting down the transmitter.

Dolgov gets restless and insists that he needs to fulfill their agreement, but Kuratov gets pissed and kills him. Almost immediately, Kuratov’s troops bring down the satellite and prepare it for transport to another part of Moscow. Elsewhere, Elena takes her soldiers to Kuratov’s lab and kills the guards there before saving Arsus, Khan, and Kseniya.

As she tells them that Dolgov was the one who set them up, and that they need to move fast to stop Kuratov, Khan just walks away, but Arsus tells Elena to give him some time to get back on board. After a while, Elena sees Arsus sitting alone and asks if there’s something bothering him. Arsus initially says he’s fine, but as Elena tells him to say whatever the problem is, he mentions that he knew when Kseniya lost her memory.

He adds that he just left her at the hospital to protect her because he was scared he would use his powers to hurt her. He then sounds concerned that he’s still not able to control his powers well, and that he sometimes wonders if he’ll fully change into a bear and never become human again. Elena believes Viktor might know how to help him, but Arsus doesn’t look convinced.

As he walks away, though, Elena calls him back to reassure him that she’ll do whatever it takes to help him. Meanwhile, Viktor stays in Kuratov’s lab to study one of the soldiers Kuratov created. While he’s at it, Kuratov enters the lab, and Viktor looks scared. Kuratov then accuses Viktor of betraying him, but the Professor says he didn’t do that. Kuratov doesn’t care about this, and he tells Viktor that he’ll soon begin his major project to remind the world that he’s a genius and not the traitor the media portrays him as.

As Viktor wonders what he wants to do, Kuratov fills the room with a toxic gas and walks away while the professor starts choking to death. Following this, he heads to the tower where the transmitter has been erected by his troops. He then powers it up and begins the process of sending a signal to a satellite in space.

Elsewhere, Elena’s agents figure out what Kuratov wants to do with the transmitter, and they inform Elena and the Guardians. Interestingly, it turns out that Kuratov wants to use the transmitter to send out a signal to an old Soviet satellite that was previously considered dangerous and too powerful. As the Guardians look shocked, one of Elena’s agents mentions that it seems Kuratov’s plan is to take over all communication satellites orbiting earth so he’ll be able to control all the machines on the planet.

With this, Elena and the Guardians realize that Kuratov’s second experiment was conducted mainly as part of a plan to control the entire earth. As they eventually figure out where he has set up the transmitter, some fighter jets are sent toward the tower to stop him. Kuratov sees them approaching him, so he activates the military robots to shoot missiles at them.

As they do this, the fighter jets get destroyed, and even though one of them shoots a missile at Kuratov, he uses a force field to protect the top of the tower. Shortly after, Elena goes to meet Khan at the top of a building where he’s meditating. Khan asks how she found him, and Elena mentions that she knows he used to come to the top of the building with his brother.

Khan then talks about his older brother and how he was very good at fighting. Khan felt jealous of him and always wanted to prove he was better, so he volunteered to be one of the test subjects for Kuratov’s experiment because the scientist promised to make him invincible. After the experiment, Khan felt stronger and decided to challenge his brother to prove he was better.

During the fight, Khan lost control of his powers and ended up killing his brother. As Khan talks about killing his brother out of jealousy, Elena says she’s sorry for his loss, but that she and the others need him to rejoin the Guardians so they can stop Kuratov’s plan. After this, Khan follows Elena back to the Patriot headquarters, and she shows the Guardians their new suits and weapons.

She then mentions that the new gear will make it easier for them to activate their powers and control them. The Guardians look excited about this, and they immediately change to their new suits and start their training. They initially struggle to fight well with the new suits and weapons, but after consistent practice, they get more comfortable and ready to take on Kuratov to stop his evil plan.

After the training, the Guardians discuss the best way to attack Kuratov. Arsus believes Kuratov will protect the tower and make it impossible for them to get through, but Elena says they can still get to him by destroying the force field. Elsewhere, Kuratov speeds up his plan and controls the old satellite to prepare it for the signal he’s about to transmit.

Shortly after, the Guardians launch a surprise attack near the tower to take down Kuratov’s troops. While Ler, Arsus, and Kseniya fight on land, Khan stays in an airplane and waits for the next stage of their plan. During the fight, Arsus transforms into a full bear, and Kseniya also turns invisible without having to stand in the rain or enter a pool of water.

She eventually gets ambushed by the troops, but before they can kill her, Arsus shows up and saves her. After taking down most of the troops, Ler, Arsus, and Kseniya enter a nearby building and use the elevator to make it to the top. Meanwhile, Elena and some of her team members enter another building and see Viktor lying lifeless on the ground.

Elena looks disappointed by this, but as she checks his pulse, she realizes that he’s still alive. Elsewhere, Kuratov’s troops nearly take down Khan’s plane, but his pilot flies away to avoid getting hit. Almost immediately, Ler, Arsus, and Kseniya leave the building and climb a pipe leading to the tower Kuratov is trying to transmit a signal from.

Kuratov’s soldiers start shooting at them to fall off the pipe, but they continue standing strong while Ler protects them with his weapon. As Khan sees that his teammates are in danger, he tells his pilot to fly closer to the pipe so he can jump down to help them. Following this, he jumps down and slices the pipe Kuratov’s troops are standing on.

He and the others then enter the building to find the power source for Kuratov’s force field. Meanwhile, Elena revives Viktor, but he appears to still be in pain. He then tells Elena that the Guardians will be safe as long as they work together.

He also mentions that they have the ability to create a massive amount of energy to destroy the tower, but that it will be hard for them to control. Elena then says she’ll tell the Guardians what to do. Elsewhere, the Guardians find the power source and look confused as to how they’ll destroy it.

As Arsus stands too close to Kseniya, she tells him to move back. After he does this, Kseniya walks toward the power source and grabs it so that she can use her powers to short circuit it. The others are shocked by this, but Arsus quickly drags her back.

Luckily, the force field gets destroyed in the process, and everyone at the Patriot headquarters rejoices. Kuratov also smiles when he sees that the force field is down, but he doesn’t seem to be bothered by it. After her heroic act, Kseniya appears to be very weak, but as Arsus asks if she’s fine, she says she is.

Elsewhere, Elena enters the Patriot headquarters, and as one of her superiors suggests launching a missile to destroy the tower, she mentions that the Guardians are still there. She also tells him to delay the attack because she has a task for them. Meanwhile, the Guardians reach the top of the tower, and Kuratov smiles as he sees them.

Arsus immediately tries to shoot him, but Kuratov knocks him out. As Ler and the others then attack him, Kuratov beats them up. Ler eventually holds on to Kseniya to become invisible and attack Kuratov. Their plan works and gets Kuratov hurt, but he breaks free before Khan can cut his head off. Kuratov then heads toward Kseniya to kill her, but Arsus turns into a full bear and stops him.

As they run toward each other, Kuratov punches Arsus and knocks him out. Everyone at the Patriot headquarters looks worried about how the fight is going, and Elena’s superior tells her that he’ll have to approve the missile attack because they can’t afford to waste any more time. Elena and her team look disappointed by this, and she just walks away.

Seeing as they can’t match Kuratov’s powers, Khan throws his swords onto a plane and gets his teammates to join him in leaving the tower. As they then hang on to a rope attached to the plane, Kuratov uses his powers to make it lose control. Before the plane crashes, Khan cuts the rope, and they fall into a nearby river.

Kuratov looks happy about this, and he says he’s destined to lead the world. Coincidentally, Elena arrives at the scene just as Khan and the others enter the river. As they eventually swim out of the river, Ler says they need to head back to the tower, but Elena shows up and says they can’t do that because the army has launched some missiles to blow up the building.

Surprisingly, Kuratov sees the missiles headed toward him and uses his powers to deflect them away to blow up in the sky. He then brags and asks what else they think they have that can stop him. Meanwhile, Elena tells the Guardians about the energy they can generate if they touch each other.

Even though she says they don’t have to try it because they could die, the Guardians don’t seem to care, and they hold on to each other while Kuratov gets closer to sending his signal to the satellite in space. Suddenly, the Guardians generate a massive energy that destroys the tower and all the buildings around it. Kuratov is shocked by this, and as the tower collapses, he falls to his death while saying he can’t believe they’ve ruined his big plan.

As Kuratov’s reign of terror ends, the Guardians are seen lying unconscious after releasing the massive wave of energy. The next day, news stations across the country start reporting that the attack on Moscow is over, and that the government has promised to fix all the damaged houses. Elsewhere, Elena and the Guardians stand at a bridge to admire the city after everything that happened.

Arsus says it’s good that the city is quiet again, and Elena commends the Guardians for being awesome individuals even without their superpowers. Khan says she’s also a good person, and that she taught him how to find dignity and become a good friend. Kseniya then mentions that she thinks she’s now remembering some of the things from her past. As she says she knows who gave her the ring on her finger, she looks at Arsus, and it turns out that they were engaged before the experiments made Kseniya lose her memory.

Arsus then says he hopes they won’t go back to their boring lives again, but Khan and Ler believe it’s impossible to be bored in a big city like Moscow. As they prepare to leave, Elena stops them and tells them that there are likely more threats in the city. Kseniya and Arsus don’t believe anything like what Kuratov did will happen again, but Elena says she hopes she’ll see them soon. Before they leave, she says she has one more thing to tell them, and as they look at her, she smiles as she mentions that the Patriot Organization has found another Guardian.

After being subjected to experiments that give them superpowers, the Guardians reunite to take down a common enemy. Even though Kuratov initially seemed to have an answer to all their attacks, they ultimately relied on their collective strength to defeat him. The Guardians knew they could die from releasing the massive energy wave, but they still did it because it was the only way they could get rid of Kuratov and restore peace in Moscow. In this story, we learn that true heroes are those who stand together and make sacrifices for the greater good.

Zashchitniki 2017.