Redux Month - Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters

We’re looking now at the second of the Percy Jackson film series and the one that would end up being the last of them. Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters

Though the leads are still familiar, much has changed around them. Thor Freudenthal (whose name will never stop being funny, when he’s directing a movie based around the Greek gods) has taken over directing and Marc Guggenheim is the new and still only writer of the film. Marc Guggenheim’s last and first project as a writer for film was Green Lantern, and we all know how much I love that film.

I’m a little more lenient to this book however, it has its flaws, it takes too much time explaining things anyone who read the last book already knew, but the story gets moving more quickly, and it isn’t all as melancholy and depressing.

Sadly though, in the spite of the change of talent, the result was much the same. A mixed reception and less money at the box office than its predecessor. Let’s take another look and see if we can work out why

We spend a good chunk of the first act playing catch-up with the book, we’re introduced to Dionysus, the god of wine who’s been cursed to sobriety thanks to Zeus, and Clarisse, daughter of Ares and Percy’s rival. We also get the story of how when Grover, Annabeth and Luke entered camp half-blood, they attacked and Thalia, daughter of Zeus sacrificed herself to save them, Zeus then sentenced her to eternity as a tree, to protect the camp from further attack.

We’re introduced to Tyson: cyclops, son of Poseidon and Percy’s half-brother. Percy isn’t entirely sure what to make of him and Annabeth is distrustful of him, having had a previous poor experience with a cyclops. The camp soon falls under attack as its revealed that Luke has poisoned Thalia, weakening the camp’s defences.

Annabeth is sent to retrieve the golden fleece, an artefact that may cure her and Percy sneaks off to help, having heard about his part through a prophecy. Turns out Luke is also seeking the fleece to resurrect Kronos. Can things get sorted out.

It seems like they spent a lot of time on book catch-up, only to make some pretty drastic diversions from the story quickly afterwards. Percy’s outward uncertainties toward Tyson are not in the book, the two had known each other for nearly a year before they even knew they were half-brothers. I guess it’s supposed to add an extra layer of guilt in the fake-out death with Tyson but his resurrection happens quickly after and with the climax on their doorstep, there’s hardly time for any of it to breathe. In the book, this happens a lot earlier, allowing characters to reflect on it.

Clarisse’s part is more or less true to the book, the only exception being her hostility towards Percy is dialled back as Percy hadn’t angered off Ares in the previous film.

Grover’s fate in the first film was so different new stuff had to be made up to jam into his position. The green teleport things are stupid, why did Luke need to be at the camp anyway? Anyway, Grover was already trying to stall Polyphemus at the beginning of the book. Speaking of, these films don’t like sending people somewhere that isn’t camp, since Percy never went to back to his mother at the end of the last film, Grover didn’t head off to find Pan either, and in this film, Tyson never went to the forge. They make up some excuse saying they need a Satyr to navigate the sea of monsters but 3 different groups make it in without a Satyr, so that was a load of rubbish.

How much did DPS pay for that good minute and a half of product placement? The whole Hermes scene feels like a re-write specifically for that product placement. Gotta fund this movie somehow, I guess. Still, I like Nathan Fillion so not a total loss.

The climax is the big diversion from the book.  It seems odd that they’d free Kronos even temporarily seeing as he’s supposed to be the big bad for the full franchise, him betraying Luke this early on also feels odd, because they feel the need to have Luke be fully defeated each time when that’s not what happens in the books.

For a start, Luke is not after the fleece directly because poisoning Thalia had a point, it seems a daft thing to do in the film (also it damaged Chrion’s standing). He wanted the fleece taken from the Sea of Monsters and would take it from them later. What he didn’t count on was Percy sending it ahead, Percy then used his wits to get Luke to confess to his crimes whilst the gods were listening, saving Chrion in the process. The gang are ultimately saved by Chiron and his centaur brethren.

Kronos is not involved, Luke lives to fight another day, and it turns out Kronos had plans within plans so Thalia’s resurrection, which also destroyed the camps’ defences, was also part of his plan. Kronos is just kind of a monster in the film, it’s disappointing. It feels like they were forced to include a big action climax where none really happened.

That being said, the plot feels less unfocused this time around, which is helped by its more focused source material. It tries to have some clever jokes that don’t rely on pop cultural references, not all of them land but it’s a bit of a change of pace. And the core cast of characters all do decent jobs. I still prefer Pierce Brosnan over Anthony Head though.

For those reasons I stand by my original assessment that Sea of Monsters is my preference of the two adaptations, though not by much.

Rating 55/100