Man of Steel

Hello there (-:

First and foremost, if you haven't noticed yet, I have changed the design of my blog! About time as well - I've had my previous template for a really long time, at least a year. For this blog's new look, I have chosen a more professional blogger style kind, instead of having to work my way through long scary looking html codes. I used to love doing that, and was pretty good at it but over time and without practice, I starting losing a lot of that knowledge. This skin would make it easier for me to edit little things like widgets so I'm very happy right now. 

That aside, I caught the new Superman film, Man of Steel today with my Youth Assembly C from the 18th Student Leaders' Convention. (if you don't know what the 18SLC is, it is an exciting event I attended last year which you can read about here.)

I don't usually enjoy watching movies - honestly, apart from Les Miserables which I was dying to watch because of the Literature and History elements in it, this movie is probably the second movie which I have caught at a cinema this entire year. I don't understand it, but I really do not appreciate movies that much, I find it to be a waste of precious time especially if you're with friends. 

That being said, Man of Steel is probably one of the films that have a good number of followers and people anticipating the release of it. I had also recently read an interview that the local newspaper had with the lead actor, Henry Cavill and he seems like such a down-to-earth and humble person. Not to mention he is very good looking. So I didn't really mind catching this show with my dear YAC mates.

The people who came for the outing were Gary, Sheila, Megan, Ryan, Jasper, An Lin, Sam and myself, which is quite a small number but they are the people in my YA that I feel the most comfortable and familiar with so they made quite nice company! We met at Vivocity and caught the movie at GV Cinemas.

While waiting for more people to arrive, Sheila and myself with the "stars" from Monsters' Inc. or more recently, Monsters' University! (apologies for the grainy photo, it was the only one we have)

Moving on to the movie, I personally was rather confused because apart from the basic knowledge that Superman is a comic book superhero and his iconic outfit he always wore, I knew nothing about this guy. I wasn't even aware that his name was Kal-El or Clark. Indeed, that was how clueless I was to start with. (Despite that, he has always been my favourite superhero) I was always under the impression that all Superman did was possess superpowers and save the world from supervillains. Never did I know that he had such an interesting backstory. This origin story is portrayed in this film, and for me, it really showed me that Superman was not just this perfect, muscular, hero but one who has his own insecurities, his own difficulties and what I loved most, his sense of morality. 

Despite my ignorance throughout the entire film, I thought that the storyline was told to the viewer quite clearly although I highly doubt that those little kindergarten kids in the same theatre as us understood anything at all (resulting an awful lot of noise from them). I really enjoyed Amy Adam's portrayal of Lois Lane, Superman's love interest as well - she was feisty and reminded me a little of Amy Pond from Doctor Who. However, I found the visual effects a little too overpowering, neglecting the emotional aspect of the movie. I was also very distracted by the actor, Russell Crowe who played Jor-El, the biological father of Superman as I kept thinking of him as Javert from the Les Miserables film. That, would most definitely be an isolated problem, of course. 

I shall attempt not to spoil the movie but I'd really like to talk about what I felt was the most meaningful theme that I got out from the movie itself. The film truly showcased the reality of our society - that we are not  accepting of something different and we do not like what we do not know. Definitely, I do not expect the world to accept some strange "alien" at first sight but the film does draw some parallels to the narrow-mindedness of the real society. Indeed, I can't say that I am an extremely open-minded individual that can take change in her stride because I am not. However, I personally feel that society's rigid mindsets, especially in a rather conservative country like Singapore, is quite disgusting. There should be room to adapt to new things and new ideas and new conventions. Why must we constantly succumb to society's predetermined expectations of us? Everyone is expected to go through the standard route of life and when someone tries something different, something fresh, something innovative, people tend to judge or not support the person. It's sad, how society in a way limits creativity. 

Perhaps I'm young, perhaps I'm foolish and perhaps I don't know what's best for me but I'm afraid of falling into the same mould that creates humans who have met "society's standards" because they morph into such uninteresting and boring creatures constantly doing routine things for the sake of survival. This has scared me for a long time now and watching the film just made that feeling a tad bit stronger. I honestly believe though, that there are like-minded individuals like myself. That's what I got from 'Man of Steel' - Superman did break out from that mould and show the people who he was. Perhaps we all have a little superhero in us as well (': I sure hope to think so.