Man Of Steel

One of the most anticipated movie of 2013. Superman, or rather, Man of Steel. This is the first movie that does not use 'Superman' as its title. But we all know 'Man of Steel' refers to the guy in the red cape. This movie stars Henry Cavill as Superman/Clark Kent/Kal-El, Amy Adams as Lois Lane, Michael Shannon as General Zod, Laurence Fishburne as Perry White, Diane Lane as Martha Kent, Kevin Costner as Jonathan Kent, Russell Crowe as Jor-El and many other stars.
This movie is a fresh take on the Superman film series as it looks into introducing Superman in a new limelight. I would say, Man of Steel may seem new but it kept the essence of the Man of Steel. Like Zack Snyder, the director, wanted Superman to keep the essence of who he is.
Here are a few info of the film (spoilers ahead!):

1. Superman's vulnerability to Kryptonite (pieces of his home world, Krypton, that crash landed to earth). As in the comics, it is widely known that Superman gets weak with Kryptonite around. In Man of Steel, we don't see Kryptonites but the essence of Kryptonite is there, when the Man of Steel was introduced to his home world's atmosphere in General Zod's ship, the Man of Steel became weak. General Zod and his team are in a Kryptonite ship that regulates the atmosphere in the ship to suit them. In one scene, we see Man of Steel coughing, it shows the human side of him because he has been growing up in earth's atmosphere, hence, he has become adaptable.
2. Perry White isn't white. Laurence Fishburne plays a good Perry White. As the head of Daily Planet, I'm sure you would have to be firm yet considerate.
3. Pete Ross, the boy that Clark saved. When Clark was young, he was in a bus that feel off the bridge and he had to save everyone. One of them was Pete Ross. Pete Ross, is Clark's good friend, who later married Lana Lang (Clark's love interest in high school). In Smallville, Pete Ross was the best friend of Clark.
4. Man of Steel has the essence of intelligence. In comics, Man of Steel gets all his knowledge from his father through the fortress of solitude (Superman's hiding place on earth, sometimes said to be in the Arctic, or Antarctic) through crystals (kinda like USB drives) containing all the knowledge of Krypton and Earth prepared by his father. In the movie, he was smart to understand and explain the plan to destroy General Zod and his team, by creating a black hole using the hyper-drive of the ship.
5. 'S' on his chest means hope on his world. On earth, it's still an 'S'. That's why the first scene to call him 'Superman' was one of the soldiers on the phone. "That's what they are calling him".
6. There's a sign 'LexCorp'. LexCorp is the company of Lex Luthor. This was seen in the battle between Superman and General Zod, when General Zod kicked a tanker towards Superman. Could it be an introduction to Lex Luthor in the next sequel? Because in this movie, Superman have yet to become the quirky reporter at the Daily Planet, not until the end of the movie.
7. There's a sign 'Wayne Enterprise'. Wayne Entreprise is Bruce Wayne's company. Bruce Wayne is Batman. The sign was seen when one of the satellite was destroyed.
8. The Man of Steel kills. In the end, Superman had to decide between his race or the human race. The scene was General Zod, after quickly picking up his super-abilities, about to kill a group of humans. So Superman, twisted Zod's neck. Superman screamed as a sign of remorse of not having anyone else from his race and "if only Zod understands". All of his team was already sucked into the phantom zone / black hole.
9. You'll see Clark carrying Lois' bags when she arrived at the Arctic.
10. His identify was quickly known by Lois Lane. Talk about a good reporter. Even though some knows his identify, but they would keep it a secret for what he has done for them. Kinda like Spiderman, when his masks was revealed on the train when he was saving people on the train.

The movie starts as similar to the introduction of Superman in other movies. It has more emphasis of Krypton and his race. Jor-El speaks to the council to save Krypton and give him the codex (containing Krypton's genetic codex). Krypton faces a threat similar to Earth, the natural resources are depleting. General Zod comes in to declare mutiny towards the council for not preserving Krypton as it should be. Jor-El is captured and returns to his home. He quickly goes to retrieve the codex and infuse it into his son, Kal-El. Zod comes and kills Jor-El. Enough time to release the pod containing Kal-El. The council captures Zod and his team and imprison them in the phantom zone, while Krypton blows up.

On earth, Clark grows up but with the frustration of restraining to not use his powers and learning to control new abilities. He grows up working odd jobs. One of the odd jobs was to help carry stuff at the Arctic. He found that the research being done at the Arctic was an alien ship which was a Kryptonian ship. On the ship, as his 'S' crystal seems to fit into the ship's panel, Jor-El consciousness appears and teaches him the answers he seeks. Lois, as a reporter would do, follows this man in the night into the ship. And later wrote the story and pass to Perry. Perry rejects the news. Lois sends it through a blogger. But after finding out the real identify of Superman, she retracts the news from Perry. Perry sense she knows who the hero is.

General Zod arrives on earth after searching endlessly for Kal-El. Superman gives himself up to save earth. And Lois Lane is also brought to Zod's Kryptonian ship, which he modified after escaping the phantom zone (when Krypton blew up, it destroyed the device keeping them in the phantom zone, thus, releasing them). On the ship, Lois escapes with the help of Jor-El, telling her where to go, when to shoot and how to defeat Zod and his team. However, Zod wanted to take earth's resources and change its atmosphere into Krypton's atmosphere by using a gigantic drill or 'world engine'. And Zod wanted to find the codex to rebuild Krypton. He believes the codex is in Superman's ship. When they found out where Superman's ship was, they came to the Kent's farm and about to attack Martha Kent when Superman appears. And so, the fight scenes begin. Starting with Faora and another tall crew against Superman at Smallville. Superman defeats Faora, convincing to the humans that he come in peace. He's the good guy.

As they learn how to defeat Zod, Superman heads over to the world engine to destroy it. Of course, there was a self-defense mechanism that attacked Superman while surviving because the atmosphere around the world engine was Krypton's, which Superman is not used to...*cough, cough*. After destroying it, and the army (Christopher Meloni's character died an honourable death sacrificing himself) send in Superman's ship to interrupt the hyper-drive and creating the black hole, Zod was still alive. Zod soon learn to control his new abilities on earth, tells Superman that he is a trained military person who have make it his point to control himself and learn fast in any situation.

They fight, drop into the train station, Zod uses his heat vision to convince Superman to decide, Krypton's race or human race. Superman twist Zod's neck and screams. As the city rebuilds, we see everyone going back to normal. The army sends drones to find out where Superman lives, but gets destroyed by Superman. And, finally, we see a new reporter at the Daily Planet, Clark Kent.

Transformers 3 : Dark of the Moon

Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon. It has been heavily promoted, change of stars, new stars, new cars, all action into the third installment of the Transformers franchise.

This movie starts from the Apollo 11 mission that was intended not to put the first man on the moon but to investigate an unknown crash on the moon. Although they say the name ‘Neil’, but it doesn’t imply it is Neil Armstrong. Even so, ‘first man on the moon’, it’s obvious. So, the astronauts went to the moon, found a wrack craft, take some samples home and keep it a secret til the day they die.

Moving to the present day, where Sam has a new girlfriend, Carly, and in dire need to find a job. How come he doesn’t get a job after saving the world? Because none of it never happened. His parents, however, is rich. The girlfriend works for a car collector and racer. The Autobots find Sentinel Prime, former Autobot leader. Anyways, to sum it all up, Sam stumbles upon Decepticons plans to use the Pillars from the space craft, Arc, to transport Decepticons to Earth. Sentinel Prime betrays Autobots because his intention is to preserve Cybertronian race. Carly’s boss is the human liaison for Decepticons. Conflict happens between Autobots and humans, Autobots get exiled from Earth. Somehow, they return, fight the Decepticons and win the war.

The movie packs a lot of action every now and then. However, I can understand why some Transformers fan didn’t like the movie. To me, one let down was when Optimus Prime uses armours from the trailer and it only last few seconds; after putting them on, slash some Decepticons and takes of the armour and continue killing some more Decepticons. The armour looks cool but it only lasted few seconds? This happens twice.

Besides that, was the battle at the end, where Optimus uses his full armour, including flight suit but got entangled in some construction wires. It was cool to watch and, yes, it lasted awhile. While his team gets trashed by Decepticons, he is still hanging on the construction wires. Until the last minute when Bumblebee was almost killed that Optimus comes to the rescue and kills most of the Decepticons.

The new squeeze, Carly. Indirectly, she was the one that wins the war. How? By being smart and telling the soldiers what to do and by telling Megatron that he should be ruler, not Sentinel. Kind of like a small little conscience to everyone.

For me, the whole movie is great in terms of being an action packed movie. However, story line wise, was kind of more action-ish. One point being, ‘Are there anymore secrets that Decepticons have that could possibly take over the world?’

Iron Man 3

Iron Man 3 is one of the most anticipated movie of 2013. The story continues from Iron Man 2, after the battle at New York City with the Avengers. In the movie, Tony is trying to cope to anxiety attacks he keeps having whenever there's a mention of New York City. The movie begins with Tony Stark recalling a New Year's Eve party in 1999 in Switzerland with a scientist he met; Maya Hansen. She shared with him about her research; Extremis. The research is about how plants can regenerate itself. And this was the key towards helping those who are crippled/disabled. There was a man; Aldrich Killian, who introduces himself to Maya and wants to work with her and fund her research through his company; A.I.M. (Advanced Idea Mechanics).
Then coming to the present day, Tony builds more Iron Man suits and can sleep due to his anxiety attacks. While that is underway, a terrorist called The Mandarin starts to threaten the President. Happy Hogan, Tony's previous right bodyguard, now takes care of Pepper Pots. When Killian comes to see Pepper Pots, Happy becomes suspicious and follows Killian's bodyguard. He sort of survives an attack and is admitted to the hospital. Tony becomes angry and issues a threat to the Mandarin. Maya, from his previous encounter in 1999, appears to warn Tony about something but not in time because Tony's home gets blown up. One of the cool part is when Tony uses his new invention; the armour can be activated through his hands movements. When his home was blown up, he activates his armour to protect Pepper. "I got you!" as Pepper uses the Iron Man suit. After saving Maya and Pepper, Tony uses the suit and return fire to the attackers. He gets suck into the water with his home. Another cool thing was his armour's hand/glove disengaged from his arm and acts as a 'helping hand' to pull Iron Man from the wreckage under the seabed. And Jarvis launch him off to Tennessee, where Tony found similarities of the bombings by Mandarin. And the world believes Tony is dead. However, he bunks in with a kid in Tennessee and fix his suit while investigating what happened in Tennessee. And soon gets discovered by Killian's bodyguard. Tony learns that the bombings that left no trail was actually a human bomb. Those army that signed up for Killian's research became invincible and are able to heat up their body or get blown off if Extremis can't be contained in their body. Tony got away from the fight with the bodyguards with the help of the boy, including helping Tony to get over his anxiety attacks. What do mechanics do? They build.
Now bent of revenge, Tony sets on to hunt down Mandarin. However, by this time, the story reveals that Maya is working for Killian, Pepper gets kidnap as leverage for Tony to help Maya perfect Extremis (it was unstable), Pepper gets injected with Extremis, Extremis is Killian's weapon of mass destruction, Iron Man suit is still down and......*spoiler alert!*....Mandarin was just a decoy. He's a Brit actor, Trevor Slattery. He squirms at Tony coming to him with a gun, not the suit. It was funny. Tony gets caught by Extremis agents. He jokes with them about how he's going fight them while tied up. But it was really about his suit coming all the way from Tennessee. This part was cool in how he fights the bad guys while getting piece by piece of his suit. But the question at this point would be, Mandarin? Why? There's two ways of seeing this:

1. As we may know, Mandarin is the oldest enemy of Iron Man. However, in this movie, he was just a decoy, which may be disappointing to fans. Perhaps the real Mandarin could be in another movie (or Universe, comics are known for creating alternate universe where there's a different story to the superheroes we initially know).
2. It takes on a new breath because Aldrich Killian is also an enemy of Iron Man. He first appeared in Iron Man comics in 2005. In the comics, he was selling Extremis to terrorists but later killed himself because he was overwhelm with guilt. This is different from the movie.

So this could be a different turn in the Iron Man story as we popularly know. Anyways, back to the story, Killian's main plan was to kidnap President Ellis and kill him on live tv and use the vice-president as a puppet because the vice-president wanted a cure for his crippled daughter through Extremis. The Iron Patriot, aka War Machine (new name from serving the country), goes on a wild goose chase tracking down, supposedly, locations of the Mandarin. Unfortunately, he is lured into a trap and his suit taken. In his place, President Ellis is put in the suit and hung up high at an oil-drilling platform. And Tony and Rhodes come to the rescue. However, there are Extremis agents all around. So what does Tony do in this kind of situation? Reinforcements! This is one I was waiting for. All his Iron Man suits appear to take out the agents. It's exciting to see all the suits. Kinda makes you wonder, why was Tony busy fixing  his main suit, when he had a whole closet of Iron Man suits undamaged from the attack at his home? And we get to see, similar to The Avengers scene, when Tony jumps of platforms and one of his suits would come and suit up. There were a few times he tried and his suit gets damaged. His main suit came to the rescue but as soon as he puts it on, it fell apart. So much for fixing the suit, throughout the movie.
As the battle of agents and suits continues, Tony tries to save Pepper but fail. Some may anticipate that the fall was not the end (remember Pepper was injected with Extremis?). So Killian and Tony (most of the time his suits get torn off) fights, and Killian died from the blast (with Tony's hand movements/activation, his suit was put on Killian and contained. Killian blows up in the suit). However, Killian survives and just when he was about to kill Tony, Pepper appears from the burning wreckage and kills Killian. Tony tells Jarvis to activate self-destructs on all his suits as to show his loyalty to spending time with Pepper.
The end is vice-president gets arrested, Mandarin or Trevor Slattery gets arrested, Tony research on Extremis to cure Pepper, Tony's arc reactor and sharpnel is removed from his heart, throws his arc reactor to the sea and say he will always be Iron Man. It indicates that Tony finally found a way to cure his heart. Throughout the story, Tony is kind of working on his own without the suit and this could have lead to him saying "I will always be Iron Man!". I was expecting the ending to be.......Tony transformed as Iron Man but it didn't happened. It could either be cool or weird because he should retain his human side.
In the post-credit, as in most superhero movies, it shows Tony telling his story to Dr. Bruce Banner, whom fell asleep. "Where did I lost you?", "Switzerland".