What are you doing today hobbywise?

I agree, Guardians was unique at the time and was able to find a decent balance of serious and humor. Marvel went head first at humor ever since and ruined almost ever movie after with stupid mood killing jokes. Other franchises followed hoping to cash in and never thought that perhaps this wasn't the way. CGI is an amazing tool to assist storytelling and there have been amazing uses of it. Sadly it's usually used as a crutch and used to hide weak story points. Practical effects if done well have a weight to them that I feel adds to the realism due to them being real. Sadly these can also be overdone to hide weak storytelling. I tend to use black and white photography as a example of my philosophy, when done well the shadows and light become characters in the movie. You will literally get a sense of the scene due to what you can and can't see clearly. The limited pallet forces you to apply camera angles and actor positions as absolute characters in each scene, and characters just as important as the dialog. With color you have more options and while everything I mentioned is still applied it is less draconian a law as you color pallet allows for emotion etc to be seen with a greater spectrum. It's why Schindlers List was so well fil.ed and other new era black and white films didn't have the same gravity. They were filmed like a colored film and ignored the need for more precise camera work. I'll stop as I have way too much of a soapbox ramble on this subject than anyone has time for.