Movie Reviews - Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters

Well this is it guys, this is the big one. This is my most anticipated movie of the year. I've said many times on this blog that I am a huge fan of the Percy Jackson series of books, but that so far I have not been a fan of the only movie release. Percy Jackson is a series that is not as well known in pop culture as Harry Potter, or even Twilight, but I really feel it should be (in the case of Twilight much more so). It builds a comparable world, and tells comparably grand stories, and while the stories are based very definitely on Greek myth and are therefor arguably less original than the Harry Potter stories, I don't think that this matters, as I feel that the art of expanding the myths into modern times takes a special talent all its own. Just as I largely attribute the widespread popularity and recognition of Harry Potter to its fantastic movie franchise, I attribute the lack of awareness of the Percy Jackson series to its poor first film. Many who saw the film and recognized it for what it was, a half-baked attempt at a cash-in, were driven away from the series as a whole. This is not my theory, this is a fact, backed by readings on several sites online. While Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief was pretty good as a popcorn movie on its own, it wasn't a good movie by any stretch. Now, don't get me wrong, what they did right they did right, but they got far less right than they did wrong. I understand that movie adaptations of books are going to be different, but the adaptation of book one was just unjustifiably too different. It reminds me of the movie adaptation of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: it simply focused most of its time on the wrong details.

Sea of Monsters fixes this, mostly.

Right off the bat, this movie begins to patch the holes left by the first one, introducing key characters who were left out, and doing so very well. There is a flashback scene at the start of the movie that was actually genuinely moving. The casting of Percy's camp rival, Clarisse, couldn't have been better. Clarisse isn't a stereotypical bully, and while it would have been easy to make her into one in this movie, she wasn't. Clarisse is in fact a girl with a difficult father, Aries, God of War, who is only looking to prove herself. She's hard on others because she doesn't want to show weakness, but she knows when to acknowledge a friend. Her movie portrayal conveys this perfectly. The camp director, Dionysus, God of Wine, who was completely absent from the first movie, is just as impeccably cast. He's funny, and he's frustrating, just as he should be. The only thing missing from his portrayal is the air of danger that follows him around, and not like James Bond danger, but "piss me off and I'll turn you into a bunch of grapes" danger. Hopefully that's forthcoming later on, because I really enjoy it. Dionysus is a Greek god, he's supposed to be scary. The Centaur, Chiron, Percy's teacher, was recast in this movie. While Pierce Brosnan did fine in movie one, the bookish Anthony Head was simply a much better choice. This is also the book where we meet Percy's half brother, the Cyclops, Tyson, and while he isn't quite how I pictured him, the young man who played him did so well that my perception of the character has forever changed. The camp looks more Greek, which is always a plus, and the portrayal of Annabeth Chase, my favorite heroine of all time, is handles so much better that I find it hard to believe at times that she's being played by the same actress. The movie just feels more like Percy Jackson, and I couldn't be happier.

These details, though, are all pretty superficial. How does the story level out? Does it have the same problems as the first movie's story? Thankfully, no, it does not. There are many changes between the book and the movie, but many of them come from the fact that the movie must begin where the first left off, and the rest fall within the realm of acceptable changes when adapting a book into another medium. First of all, because Percy remains at camp at the end of the summer, rather than go home as he does in the book, he's still at camp at the start of this movie, and because he and Tyson meet outside of camp in the book, he must meet Tyson in a different way in the movie. Also, Percy's Satyr friend Grover is supposed to be on his own quest in this story, a quest to find the Wild God, Pan. He's captured by a Cyclops, Polyphemus, from the Odyssey, and he sends Percy visions which help him realize that the object that the characters seek in this story, the Golden Fleece, is in the same place that Grover is. However, because Pan isn't mentioned in movie one, Grover cannot be questing for him at the start of this movie, and so to put him on Polyphemus' island, he must be kidnapped during the quest. He never sends any visions to Percy, but that's okay, because the characters clearly would have found the island, and Grover, anyway. In both the book and the movie, they had more clues and resources than they needed pretty much right off the bat.

This movie did a much better job of picking up the pieces than I ever would have expected, and then it took those pieces and built a very cool movie with them. The story from there was cohesive, and even took some lines straight from the book. The order of events was a little different. For example, the characters meet up with the Gray Sisters in this book. For those who don't know, the Gray Sisters are the elderly women who all share one eye and can see the future (and they are not the Fates). In the book, because the characters are returning to camp, they meet the Gray Sisters, who now run a Taxi service, on the way to camp. Here they simply meet them as they're leaving. That's the only difference. Otherwise the portrayal of the Gray Sisters is great, and they serve the correct purpose in the story. There is also a scene where Percy meets Hermes, who is the godly father of the series' secondary antagonist, Luke. It is also placed a little differently, but it still doesn't feel out of place, and I think it actually works better than it does in the book (maybe because Hermes is played by Nathan Fillion). After this, the movie progresses pretty much as the book does, with some details reduced down to fit the running time, which brings me to my primary issue with the movie: it was a little short.

At only one hour and forty-six minutes in length, this movie is fifteen to twenty minutes shorter than most blockbusters these days. This wouldn't be too bad except for an accompanying issue, that the movie makers are clearly worrying that they will not get a third movie. One of the things that makes the second book a weaker read is the fact that the climax consists of a drawn out fight with Polyphemus, a Cyclops who is defeated in the book in a very similar way to how he's defeated in the Odyssey. The battle isn't unexciting, it just gets old after a while. They think they beat him, them they didn't, then they think they beat him, and then they didn't, and then they finally beat him. There's a death fake-out, but otherwise its pretty standard. There is also very little confrontation between Percy and Luke in the book, and no confrontation between Percy and the main baddy, Kronos. In the first book we at least heard Kronos' voice. Also, the book reveals that Percy is a child of prophesy, reveals the gist of the prophesy, but doesn't reveal it word for word. In the movie, the prophesy is revealed (and properly updated to account for the fact that the characters are older in the movies), and Kronos is temporarily revived in a way that leaves it open for the story to progress as it should from that point forward. This would annoy me more, but I actually think that it helps the story be more exciting, and of course it wraps up enough that the ending isn't a complete cliffhanger (in case they don't get a movie three). Polyphemus still has a lot of character, but his part is reduced down considerably. Luke's part is played up, and his confrontation with Percy during the climax is much more satisfying.

So why does the running time bother me if the movie does so many things well? It's simple: there are a few times where the movie seems to be a little rushed. I don't know if the movie just didn't have the budget to do everything that it wanted to do, or if there was another reason, but it's true. It doesn't really hiccup the movie too badly or anything, and its possible that its just me being used to the pacing of the book, and there's nothing wrong with the pacing of the movie at all.

So, anyone who's ever read my reviews knows that its about now where I say that the movie does a lot right, but there are still problems. Sadly, this movie is no exception. Thankfully, though, where I had a laundry list of problems with the first movie, I only really had two with this movie. First of all, I love Percy's sword, Anaklismos, or Riptide, to use the English name rather than the Ancient Greek one. In the books, the sword is a cursed sword, but it is cursed because it was given to Hercules by a girl who trusted him, and was betrayed by him and disowned by her family because of it. At some point the camp ends up with the sword, and Percy gets it, and he's able to control it despite the curse. This means that the sword can be the weapon to kill Kronos, who is said to be reaped by a "cursed blade". In the movie, the sword was Poseidon's weapon from the time of the original war with Kronos in ancient times, and it is cursed just because. Everything else is basically the same, and really this change is here for the same reason that a confrontation with Kronos was added to the movie: they weren't sure if they were getting any more movies and needed to show that the blade was a cursed blade.

The other main issue that I had was the removal of one of the quest obstacles. In the book, the heroes must escape the Island of Circe, one of the Odyssey villains. This confrontation is completely removed from the movie, even though it could have been done in about ten minutes and lengthened the movie to a more typical length. This isn't a huge issue. Circe in the book is pretty much a more ambiguously evil rehash of Circe from the Odyssey, and the scene with her only serves to deal with the fact that Percy is feeling inadequate in this story, and this is dealt with better elsewhere in both versions. If any scene had to be taken out to save time, I'd rather it be the Circe scene than any other. Other little details are removed, but this is a big one, and while it doesn't hurt too much, I guess I just really wanted to see it done on screen. Oh well.

Overall Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters is not perfect. It still has some issues, but then again, it had a lot of issues to work through. It ranks up there was some of the more average book-to-movie adaptations, and even manages to do some things exceptionally well, particularly Clarisse and Tyson (fyi, I'm totally for Leven Rambin, the actress who played Clarisse, in the role of Wonder Woman, and believe me that says a lot). It is a movie worth seeing, and worthy of the Percy Jackson name. This movie gives me hope for the future of the Percy Jackson film franchise. I will buy this movie on Blu-ray when it comes out, and I plan to go see it again this weekend with my sister. On it's own merits, I give this movie a high 7 out of 10, bumped up to an 8 out of 10 for the hope that it gives me regarding the handling of this franchise going forward. I only hope that the deficits of the first film don't turn movie-goers off of this one.

**Addendum: In my haste to post this review, I completely spaced out regarding a scene from the book which should have been in the movie, and was not. While Annabeth was portrayed better, she never really got any development in this movie, and this scene would have developed her character and exposed her fatal flaw of hubris. There will be chances to reveal this in later movies as well, and if the writers don't take them, it will be a mistake. I've been thinking about it, and sadly the failure to include this five minute scene bumps my score for the movie itself down half a point to a 6.5, taking it from a high score to above average. My score relating to my feelings toward the handling of the franchise remains the same, however. This movie was undeniably better than the first, and I have no reason to think that they won't continue to get better going forward.