I hereby confess my love towards thee. I have been reading thee for 3 days and have not finished thee yet. Thou might think that I am lazy and that my affection towards thee is feigned; I say, upon this page where everyone can see and thus no one shall lie, I LOVE THEE!! It took so much time because I went over what thou are saying over and over again!! I was first attracted to thee when I looked into thy structural composition for the AP Literature presentation. The five staged contents - Exposition/ Rising Action/ Climax/ Falling Action/ Conclusion - proved how well written and sophisticatedly contrived thou are; the subtle overlapping and smooth transition between each stage made it easy for me to read through thee and embrace thy messages. In addition, thou are prone to understand human emotions very well. Thou, without any pretense or affectation, vividly portray what characters feel, why they feel such sentiments, and how they react. I especially like thy being so humane and easily apprehensible; THAT IS SO CHARMING!!!
-> honored King Lear
I hereby confess my resentment towards thee. Why are thou written in old language!! Though my deep love ultimately overcame the obstacle, thou are such a bad person who makes her lover to bury his head into an old English dictionary. Also, whay are thee so fat!! Thou are like 200 pages. Next time, though probably I will never meet anyone so attractive as thee, try to reduce some weight. Thou kill all thy servants who all gather to send thy messages. Lear is dead, Cordelia is dead, Regan is dead, Goneril is dead,... The decisiveness is also what leads me to like thee; yet, the very same cruelty sometimes frighten me. Make sure thou never scare me!!
-> furious King Lear
-> furious King Lear
-> Death of Cordelia
I hereby confess my sorriness towards thee. I am deeply sorry for carelessly throwing thee into the school bag and making thy skin crumpled. I am also deeply sorry for carelessly throwing thee onto my bed and folding thy arms and legs as I slept over thy bent body. Though I can never repair and restore thee, I promise thee that I will try my best to keep thee in the finest condition and love thee way more than the magnitude of pain I have given thee.
I hereby expressed all what I wanted to tell thee. Though I end my letter to thee here, my deepest affection for thee never ends.
Genre: SF, Action, Adventure Release: 2006 .06 .28 Running time: 154 minutes Director: Bryan Singer Written by: Daniel Harris, Michael Dougherty Presented by: Warners Bros. Pictures Main Actors: Brandon Routh (Superman / Clark Kent), Kate Bosworth (Lois Lane), James Marsden (Richard White), Kevin Spacey (Lex Luthor), Frank Langella (Perry White)
Synopsis: After being disappeared from Earth for 5 years to visit his home planet Krypton - where he finds nothing but remnants, Superman returns!! Yet, in the meantime when he was gone, the world has changed a lot; cities are full of criminals and their evil conducts, his former lover Kate Bosworth is engaged to her newspaper company editor's cousin, and the forever villain Lex Luthor is out of prison and is planning to destroy the whole continent of North America and kill billions of people; he tries to use the crystals of Krypton to build a continent that will wipe out most of the continent.
To prevent the sinister dream of Luthor's from being achieved, the Man of Steel fights against the psychopathic criminal. Yet, Luthor uses Kryptonite - the lethal substance that is Superman's only weakness - and our Superman gets into a trouble....
One of the renowned Hollywood blockbuster movie directors who directed "The Usual Suspects", "X-men" series, Bryan Singer, has come with a new work: the "Superman Returns". How much he wanted to work on this movie can easily be seen from many episodes; for one, Singer refused to direct "X-men3" - unarguably one of the most widely known job in his career that earned him huge fame - and handed the job over other director, Brett Ratner SOLELY in order to work on the Man of Steel! As an enormous fan of "Superman" himself , how Singer would interpret and add variation to the original superman figure has drawn attention of many people.
- Reflection? Artificiality!
Though both "X-men" series and "Superman" series come from the same source, comic book series, they come to us in a very different way. "X-men" had never been filmed before Singer and thus, every single characteristic and feature that Singer gave to the characters directly became the true figure of them. In case of "Superman", on the other hand, Singer had to both present new interpretation of characters whild reflecting some of the qualities that Richard D. Doner and Richard Lester had given to it in the original Superman in 1979 and 1980. When he decided to summon Superman back to 21st century from 1980s, Singer must have "fitly" fuse and separate from the original "Superman".
However, it seems that Singer failed to do so; the movie is tied too much with the past Superman series. The "Superman Returns" excessively sticks to the original version in that it uses classical narrative and exterior of characters. Even the credit sequence that comes at the very beginning of the film and the very ending of the film is the very same credit sequence that Richard Doner had used. Outside of that, astonishingly similar-looking actors as the past version, artificially made place setting at 1970s NYC, the very same places such as the bar, littery offices of Daily Planet building, and jammed streets of NY that had formed the place setting of the previous version coming up again all sum up and make the movie too much tied to the 1979 Superman. What's even more restraining is that for the places which appear in the Doner's Superman but not in his, Singer makes a miniature models of them and displays them in Luthor's home. Trivial episodes reappear just as it was in the past Superman series such as Kent and Olson talking in a bar; even the camera angle is identical. Not only the settings being repeated but camera angles, lines of actors, situations in the film, and scenes of the movie being repeated just the same as the past series causes artificiality. Preservation of the Man of Steel in 1980s as if it was in a vaccuum tube is not a way to connect the Superman series; it should reflect that the audience is living in the 21st century and thus, Superman has "changed" by the time.
- Interesting Status of Lex Luthor
During the movie, Lex Luthor compares himself to the Prometheus who in Greek mythology stole fire from Gods and gave it to humans and thereby let human civilization develop. He compares the Man of Steel as God and avows to fight against him.
In the Greek myth, Prometheus is unrequitedly punished for crossing God's will. Yet, in the Superman Returns, Luthor has coordinative status as does Superman. At this point, an interesting conjecture comes up.
The very beginning of the movie starts with the story of Lex Luthor. In the scene, Luthor inherits billons of dollars from a dowager - who he married with - and gets a huge power. He then goes to the 'fort of solitude' which is located in Superman's native planet with the money and meets with the illusion of Superman's father, Kal-El. The illusion is deluded that it assumes Luthor to be Superman and gives him the power of Krypton crystal and Luthor steals all the crystals from the planet.
That the tool that Luthor commits evil deeds with is the source of Superman's power is somehow ridiculous and ironic. However, if we put the relationship in the light of brothers, Luthor seems to be the evil sibling of Superman's, Cain.
Here, interestingly, the lady who acted the dowager is the very same actor who acted Lois Lane in the original Superman. Therefore, Lex Luthor, who married Lois Lane and was admitted by Kal-El could be intepreted as Superman's id and an evil brother who has to kill Superman.
Maybe, Luthor is not the Prometheus, but Hades, who is the older brother of Zeus and takes care of the afterlife world.
- Superman as an extraterrestrial being
If we see the Superman movies made in 1979 and 1980s, the Man of Steel is described as a humane and assimilative being that saves the world, has weaknesses and "feels" human feelings. However, in the Superman Returns, the Man of Steel is a man of "steel" who is stuck in the space between the human world and the alien world.
Luthor saying "He's dead" when Kal-El's illusion appears, the editor of Daily Planet preparing two articles titled 'Superman is dead' and 'Superman is alive', Lois Lane writing an article titled 'The reason we donot need Superman anymore', heroic actions of Superman becoming the subject of entertainment of people all show that Superman's existence is not "necessary" for people anymore.
Superman's costume makes him unnatural and artificial. Bullet getting crushed when it hits Superman's eye makes the Man of Steel a "steel"-like being. Superman is described as an extraterrestrial existence through the film and whereas it sends a social message about how selfish and corrupting human nature is, it disappoints crowd who wants a "hero" and wishes to feel safe with his abilities.
-After watching...
In the movie, the assumption that Superman is a savior sent be Kal-El to help people and save them from their inheritant wickedness parallels with the setting of Bible where God sends Jesus Christ to save the people. Whereas Superman is a herioc being who devotes to humankind's salvation and safety and thus must be applauded, as Jesus had to sacrifice himself, the Man of Steel must die.
Brian Singer seems to have understood the matter of imperfection very well and have expressed it very well throughout the movie.
It aroused reminiscence that the Man of Steel had made his comeback. Yet, watching the 1979 appearance of him in 2010 was somehow unnatural and artificial.
Yet, I enjoyed the movie in general, and the fundamental question that the film throws - How innately evil we are and how we should solve the matter out - reminds us of the social problems and filthy crimes going on in our societies. Hope the movie, even a very little bit, helps raising people's moral standards that will ultimately lead us onto trying to solve social problems.
It has long been a dream of mine to travel alone in a "new world" - a world where I have never been to, where I do not have any acquaintance, where I am not at all familiar with the culture, and where I would feel totally isolated and alienated. I always became excited as I imagined meeting with some unknown indigenous tribes and trying my best to converse with them and assimilate to their way of living. The fascination of the dream mainly came from two sources; first, I wanted to be "unique" and have unique experience and second, I wanted to "feel the nature".
During the last winter vacation, the desire has grown more intense; the only and major reason for the intensification was Walden, written by the famous American writer and theorist, Henry David Thoreau. It is a very well known episode that Thoreau isolated himself from the civilized world for 2 years in order to leave himself, his "existence" and "being", away from all the artificial things and learn the true value of nature.
Before reading the masterpiece, my awareness toward nature was somewhat indifferent. Truly, I have read and heard a lot of literary works, sayings, and remarks about the value of nature - how peaceful, cozy, and motherly it is. Yet, for they never got into the deepest facet of nature and thus never reflected the truist aspect of it, they were just a trivial and repetitive words ; they never "came to my skin".
As I flipped the pages of Walden, however, I felt that my heart was beating with excitement, my hands were trembling with astonishment, and my hair was getting sweaty with the fabulous and evident insight of the author. Walden combines both the philosophies of the Eastern thinkers and the Western thinkers; such ideas like Mencius' "Zhung-yong [중용]" - an idea that a wise man should closely observe and realize the value and fundamentals of nature and follow the order without trying to commit extreme conducts that will harm the harmony- are appropriately connected to the author's own experience in the nature; for the Mencius' philosophy, it is combined with the Thoreau's experience with some farmer who had failed to successfully train a dog -because he, foolishly, thought that because dogs run faster than people, dogs could reach everywhere within several hours; becuase he, stupidly, thought that because dogs have more sensitive olfactory senses than people, dogs could smell and distinguish everything.
Sequence of such evident connection and proof of all the trivial texts I have learned with real life episodes that he himself experienced have led me to revive my old dream and be dominated by the excitement and satisfaction that the experience would give me.
Having watched the "Spring" part of the director Kim Ki-Duk's film, many of my classmates talked about how cute the boy is, how poor the fish and snake are, and how mysterious some of the scenes are. Throughout the movie, however, I thought of my dream; the dream that I had in my young elementary days, the dream that I reminded of as I was reading Walden, and the dream that I promised myself to achieve before I graduate college.
The setting of the film rests in some temple in the middle of a lake that is surrounded by mountains and that has no sign of human exploitation. Two Buddist monks - one old and one very young - live in the temple. It was the very setting I dreamed of, except for the fact that there were not much people to contact with.
Being able to live in the environment is such a fortunate gift for me. As seen in the film, any person would be completely liberated from the civilization and be able to cry at the death of a "small" fish and a "small" snake. These days, more and more I feel the arrogance of humankind - we assume that we are "big" compared to other creatures; we are NOT. I earnestly wish that I could, for one large fraction of my life, be able to find the life-yearned place and reflect myself, my feelings, and my life.
