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

Redux Month: Percy Jackson & the (Olympians: The) Lightning Thief

I took a look at the Percy Jackson movies side by side as a sequel baiting, concluding that whilst neither of them were good, Sea of Monsters marginally edged out The Lightning Thief as a better product. Now time to look at each of them as individual entities.

I have now read the first two Percy Jackson novels and… they were OK. It was a reasonably engaging tale and I like the idea of Greek Gods operating in the modern world but I felt like Percy got to see all the horror and calamity with none of the fun and joy. And this may have been intentional, true to Greek myth and whatnot, but was jarring to me as a reader. It kinda reminded me of the Spiderwick Chronicles (the film anyway, and not in context, but in tone). The Lightning Thief was the worst for this, as we continually saw that Percy was being blamed for disasters caused by the monster fights, being essentially branded a terrorist.

The writer for this first outing and yes, there’s only one, is Craig Titley. He did the not particularly good live action Scooby Doo movie, a couple of decent episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars and a few from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. So, you could argue this as a net positive, not seen Cheaper by the Dozen so can’t use that to judge but it’s never a great sign when you only have one writer, and no-one to reign him in.

Chris Columbus is in the director’s chair, just off of the first two Harry Potter movies, so at least he’s a guy with experience in this. The film made money but not to the same level as Harry Potter did and got a more decidedly mixed reception. Why? Let’s take a closer look.