Spiderman Trilogy : The real mastermind who never got caught

Welcome everyone to the very 1st of Tan Jo's "movie-bashing : so you think you've seen it all" series of posts.

Now the 1st movie, or rather movies that I just have to address is non-other than the Spiderman trilogy.

The Greatest Battle indeed lies within~

Sorry my dears, for we have all been fooled -- in-movie characters and spiderman fans alike. Reason for this is that so much focus has been put on the secondary, and proven-to-be-short-lived super villians that the real mastermind pulling all the strings behind the whole plot throughout the trilogy got away with minimal blame.


So, who are the real bad guys in the movies? If you answered Dr. Octavious, the Green Goblin, Sandman and Enigma, then you are probably only half right(but you still get your brownie points^^). No my friend, the REAL, most cunning villian behing the whole spiderman trilogy is none other than - jeng jeng jeng

~the Osbourne family butler~

No doubt by now, many would have one eye-brow raised in a manner which I just love, but I ask you to first consider the facts carefully 1st.

1st movie :

-Family butler kept Harry in the dark about his crazed-father being gradually corrupted by the elixer made by Oscorp, turning him into the Green Goblin. <-- By the time, he had the perfect excuse of "Not wanting to meddle in my masters personal affairs.." But the reason he kept to himself was because he wanted old man Osbourne dead and out of the way, and the best way to let someone else do it for him was to let Osbourne turn into a supervillian.

2nd movie :

-Despite knowing that old man Osbourne died at his own hand, he kept mum about it, so that Harry would get the impression that Spiderman murdered his father and hence attempt to avenge him. <-- again, he cooked up the same pitiful excuse that personal affairs and butlers do not mix. But what he was trying to do is that, after putting daddy out of the way, it's time to remove his son. And since hunting Spiders was demonstrated by old man Osbourne to be very fatal to flying goblins, all he had to do was to keep quiet to frame spiderman, and mislead Harry into thinking that his best friend Peter Parker, aka Spiderman, killed his father.

3rd movie :

-Playing with spiders almost killed Harry (it destroyed half his face, if you remember).. but somehow, by fate perhaps, Harry was spared death. This does not fit nicely into the butler's plans at all.. so he just had to resort to Plan B to ensure Harry's death - by telling him NOW that spiderman wasn't his father's murderer. This is because he knows that, Harry, being a good man, would be tortured by conscience after knowing that all that he did to hurt his best friend, Peter Parker was not justified. So the outcome was as he had planned - overcomed with guilt, Harry is playing with spiders again, this time a more powerful black spider - Enigma, trying to save his wronged best friend. And this time, the butler succeeded. Harry was killed in the end, trying to save Spiderman and Mary Jane; and all the blame was on Enigma. Mission accomplished!

..and the perfect alibi..

-The butler wants to inherit Oscorp. Think about it : lone parent, dead mum, only son.. and the only other person that can be called "family" is himself, the butler. Only two people stand in his way to inheriting a whole business empire. Besides, old man Osbourne doesn't look like the perfect employer anyway.. and I'll bet green wasn't the butler's favourtie colour anyway.

poor Harry never knew what happened~

So think about it. It all makes sense, and yet, nobody notices his wicked ambitions because everyone is so caught up with the other, short-lived supervillians. People have the misconception that if you do not have wicked laughter, robotic tentacles protruding from your back or a face with too many teeth that one forgot to brush properly, then you do not qualify as a villian in a movie.

Perceptions. Stereotypes. Discrimination.

Anyway, that's it for my first Movie-basher post. Stay tuned for my next one, which will probably be on Transformers which I just saw last week ;)

Special thanks to Eunice for suggesting that both of us go film another spiderman movie to expose the butler's evil deeds - "Spiderman 2 and 1/2 : The Threat behind the Tux" xD

Just when you think you've seen it all..

nusDB goes blogger!

This is all part of out matriculation '07 recruitment drive :D

http://nusDb.blogspot.com/

if you are a defacto rower, or if you think you have something that will be worth posting on the blog.. please contact me to arrange for posting rights ;)

Finally a follow-up to the semi-charmed life

Ah.. It's almost been a month since it happened. I should've blogged about it ages ago, when it was still fresh, but I wanted to save it for my personal show-tell-sessions with a few of my closest friends 1st before making it public on this blog of mine. Real-time story-telling sessions are way more fun and dramatic than a dry blog post right? OK LAH, I admit that I was desperate to enjoy the full extent of gloating rights before I disclose my experience to all my friends here(at least those who frequent my blog). But sadly, I realised that, not many have the patience to sit through such a long-winded story when there's so much that one can possibly do when faced with the PC/laptop. That was possibly why most of my buddies only heard half of the story and lost interest just before the climax comes in :( oh well~ not like good listeners are a dime a dozen..

But perhaps the amusing part was how some people whom I tried to tell this to on msn, just jumped to their own conclusions about the rest of the story from the title and think that there's no need for me to narrate the rest of it. (I DID NOT get a new girlfriend! ><) Anyway, this just serves to demonstrate how people tend to hear the things that they want to hear, instead of being a good listener who sits through the story till the curtains finally comes down. So, drawing from the lessons learnt over my failed story-telling sessions, I urge you, dear reader to not be fooled by the interesting title of the story that I'm about to share below. Take time to read through it, cause there's "more than what meets the eye". (TRANSFORMERS!baybeh! xD)

The Korean girl who fell out of the sky and I

It was Tuesday morning, two days after the Penang Dragonboat Festival in which my varsity dragonboat team just took part in (yeah, yeah.. the one with the ridiculous disqualification over "dispirited" drumming). I could've taken the coach with the guys back to Singapore the day before, but I felt that I wanted to stay one more day with my family (I only had a weeks' time to spend home in a freaking 3 months semester break, of course I must treasure every single day I have =P). So I travelled alone by bus the next night, which ended me up at the Woodlands Checkpoint early that morning. Then a girl whom I noticed to be quite fair the night before started to inquire the other passengers about immigration procedures. It was then that I realised(from her limited command of english) that she was actually Korean.

Failling which to brief her on the forms she has to fill up at the checkpoint, that and the eager and innocent look on her face, I offered to accompany her through immigrations - training wasn't due till late evening that day afterall.

OMG, you should've seen the amount of time the poor girl spent just to have her passport cleared. I seriously considered just dumping her and go on my way.. but a promise is a promise la, so I waited for her at the exit. When she finally came out, I knew that the bus that we took probably left because there's no way the driver could've waited so long for her. That was okay for me, since my initial plan was to just take a public bus from the checkpoint straight to my uncle's place in Bukit Timah. Somehow, I managed to communicate to her of her predicament, and found, to my disbelief that she had not a single Singaporean cent on her! Upon further inquiry, I found out that she wanted to go to Orchard Road, which my uncle's place is on the way from, so I spared her some coins(in fact, all my 20 cents coins that were supposed to be used for laundry at PGP for the next sem T.T) and asked her along.

Anyway, as I was giving her intructions on how to get to Orchard Road once I dropped off at my uncle's place, we chatted.. I found out that she's a kindergarten teacher in Seoul, and she was touring Penang with some friends. Surprisingly, none of them wanted to visit Singapore except herself, so out of an incredible act of bravery, there she was, travelling solo on her one-day incursion into the Lion City. On a side note, she said that I looked like Korean footballer Lee Dong Gook^^ and she awas all praise for Penang's hospitality ^^

Anyway, the more we talked, the more I was certain that, with her limited English capabilities(and her Korean-to-English traveller's guide), she's definitely gonna get into trouble finding Orchard Road. I imagined how terrible it would be for her if she used up all my coins and was lost somewhere in the city, and out of impulse I told her to sit tight, cause I'm gonna accompany her to Orchard. I sorta lied that my place is very close to Orchard(about 15-20mins bus ride la) and that I always wanted to see Orchard Road early in the mornings before it "wakes up". And it was a good thing too, because when we got there, I took her to an atm in Paragon so that she could use her ONE visa card. And SOMEHOW, by some tremendous slip of fate (or perhaps a joke of God if you'll have it), the blur girl actually managed to key in the wrong 4-digit PIN 7 times such that her visa card got barred. -__-'''

So I guess you guys will be able to guess what happened la -- PANIC, frantically-trying-her-card-on-every-single-atm-machine-she-could-find-PANIC. Good thing I never left her when she told me she'd be alright on her own just now, lol. I knew what to do straight away(from watching too much tv) - she would have to call back to her visa card provider in Seoul to unblock her card. But I had quite a hard time trying to make that clear to her in as simple english as I can conjure up. There was even one point where she exasperately exclaimed that how she wished she could talk to someone who knows Korean at that moment. Eventually, the message got through, but herein lies the 2nd problem : where the hell do we find coinphones in Orchard Road? (Singaporeans would be able to emphatise with this). So.. my Tuesday morning became a coinphone hunt along Orchard Road.. cool right^^

Finally, we found some coinphones in Lucky Plaza and we spent 15mins there trying to figure out how to dial Seoul, lol. (btw, Korean operators sound so sweet xD) When she finally got through to the visa provider, she was estatic! Lol. And after 10mins on the phone, her visa card was ready for another try. And to our relief, it worked. Btw, her name was Yoon Hee, and she offered to pay me 50 bucks for my trouble but I refused, so she asked me to at least let her treat me breakfast, which we had at Paragon, and shw commented that Singaporean tea tastes weird^^. Anyway, now that she's gotten to her source of cash, I was finally relieved to leave her with some tourist spots that she might wanna visit during her stay here along with some intructions on how to pruchase tickets back to Penang. Then it's back to bed for me.. gotta prepare for training later in the evening.. as Chin Seong puts it, too bad I have training that day HOR.. xD I will always remember the way she looked at me in disbelief and said, "You. Right. You. Right" after hanging up the payphone.. and smiled:)

btw, here's some photos of the korean footballer whom I'm supposed to resemble.. lol.. you are welcome to make your comparisons with some of my photos in my earlier posts :)

Lee Dong Gook

..yet another one of my hmm-so-free-at-work-maybe-i-should-blog-again post.. ciao~