Review of Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (2013) by Zachary C — 29 Dec 2013

The Sea of Monsters was a lauded book in its time for the great characters it introduced and developed them over the course of its story, while throwing in a creative twist to the typical action type by adding in the story of the Greek Gods. This easily attracted people with its creative story and the visualizing details it allowed.

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters almost COMPLETELY fails in being an adaptation. In fact, it breaks the number one rule an adaptation should not break; it made me question whether the original material was actually good in the first place.

The movie takes the characters from the novel and make them so bland and unoriginal that they do not need to be called by their names anymore. I called them Stereotypical hero, stereotypical smart girl who still somehow achieves nothing, and stereotypical failed comedy device. Seriously, Annabeth is a fighter and a skilled tactician in the book, and in the movie she is casually pushed aside to show how "perfect and well mannered" Percy is. Clarisee is a bland bully with hardly any redeemable traits. The antagonist is bland. Chiron is bland. The only interesting character is Mr. D, and he hardly gets any screen time. It changes the plot for completely unnecessary subplots. Douglas Smith fails to deliver any emotion to Tyson besides dumb and trusting.

The creators of the movie have no idea what CGI is supposed to be used for. While the CGI is pretty decent, it's abused more than anything I've ever seen. CGI is supposed to be used in order to give the impression that something not in the scene is actually there. For example, a mechanical bull attacks Percy. The bull is obviously not real, from the way it interacts(or really, doesn't interact) with the environment. Its colors give it the wrong contrast, and the scene was directed so the bull does as little as possible, which makes it stupid. Instead of sing animatronics from time to time to help give sustenance and a realistic weight, there appeared to be no effort gone into it.

There are far more things wrong with this flick, and I don't plan to ramble on about them. One thing for sure, if a character I so adored suddenly didn't seem so well made, that pretty much guarantees the thumbs down.