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.
