{"id":344444,"date":"2025-12-12T13:23:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T13:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/344444\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T13:23:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T13:23:09","slug":"five-thoughts-after-revisiting-the-bizarre-percy-jackson-movie-sequel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/344444\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Thoughts After Revisiting the Bizarre \u2018Percy Jackson\u2019 Movie Sequel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Movies<\/a>Movies<\/a>The second season of the \u2018Percy Jackson and the Olympians\u2019 Disney+ series will adapt the same book that spelled disaster for the film series 12 years ago. Luckily, doing a better job won\u2019t be a tough task.\"\"20th Century Fox\/Getty Images\/Ringer illustration\"\"<\/a>By Kellen Becoats<\/a>Dec. 12, 1:01 pm UTC \u2022 6 min<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve all been guilty of initially judging movies too harshly. In the era of crafting the perfect Letterboxd review and obsessively refreshing Rotten Tomatoes scores, it can be hard to truly appreciate good cinema. It also doesn\u2019t help that top-level executives<\/a> would rather you scroll through a never-ending waterfall of content than venture out to your local theater.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So in the spirit of revisiting something with fresh eyes, I decided to rewatch Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, the second movie in the Logan Lerman-verse that likely could have seen Rick Riordan\u2019s series filling the massive hole that Harry Potter left when its film adaptations concluded in 2011. Sea of Monsters wasn\u2019t a total disaster at the box office (though it was a significant decline from the first movie), but a combination of bad reviews, poor fan reaction, and the actors getting too old to still pass as teenagers would ultimately sink the series. And further film adaptations were shelved before even making it halfway through the book series\u2014each movie was set to follow one of the five books in the series, but things got a little mangled, as we\u2019ll explore later. Thankfully, the television version of Percy Jackson and the Olympians has fared far<\/a> better<\/a>, and with the second season\u2014which premiered this week\u2014also adapting Sea of Monsters, we thought it\u2019d be a perfect time to revisit the forgotten oddity that director Thor Freudenthal and writer Marc Guggenheim gave us 12 years ago.<\/p>\n

Is this movie wildly flavorless and mostly unfunny? Yes. Does it take wild liberties with the book in order to cram some additional CGI set pieces into the film? Also yes. But for now, let\u2019s reach out<\/a> to the water, close our eyes, concentrate really hard, and hope this is all over soon.<\/p>\n

The Opening Sequence<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s get this out of the way immediately: If you\u2019ve read the books, you\u2019re probably not going to like this movie. I can see why Riordan<\/a> decided it was probably better to not continue the franchise. (Aging the characters up<\/a> in the first place was so egregious that it should get its own section, but let\u2019s stay on topic and talk about the plot and its inconsistencies.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

The first change from the novel is that Percy now lives at Camp Half-Blood full-time instead of just in the summer, which robs us of the book\u2019s opening set piece where Percy meets his half-cyclops brother Tyson while playing dodgeball against cannibals. You\u2019re telling me you\u2019d rather watch the Capture the Flag competition that looks like a weird combination<\/a> of a tough mudder<\/a> and a Gladiator II reenactment? By the time we got to the Fall Out Boy needle drop, I was very close to exiting out of Disney+ and making better life decisions.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat<\/p>\n

Alas, I plowed on and was confronted with even more baffling changes. Grover isn\u2019t captured by Polyphemus, but rather taken by Luke and his goons in Washington, D.C., which cuts out the psychic connection that the satyr and Percy have in the books. This leads us to the Princess Andromeda<\/a>, which resembles a small luxury yacht rather than a massive cruise ship. A vessel that\u2019s intended to carry several demigod defectors and Kronos\u2019s coffin looks more like a ship that would be embarrassed to see itself on Below Deck. Worst of all is Percy reaching out to the water like a Jedi trying to summon the Force and creating a big-ass wave that \u2026 does not look good<\/a>. Bonus points for letting Luke, a son of Hermes with no water powers, also ride the wave and giving us this shot<\/a>. 10\/10, no notes Mr. Freudenthal\u00a0<\/p>\n

Belly of the Beast<\/p>\n

Please join me in the Charybdis Science Corner for a second. Our heroes have been eaten by the infamous<\/a> sea monster and run into Clarisse: demigod daughter of Ares; foil to Percy; and current captain of the CSS Birmingham, a former Confederate ship, along with its undead crew. What are a group of demigods and zombies\u2014excuse me, \u201cdead soldiers who have given their lives in tribute to Ares\u201d\u2014to do but shoot their way out of the monster\u2019s stomach?<\/p>\n

Now I know what you\u2019re thinking: Wait, aren\u2019t they underwater? Like, presumably several hundred feet underwater? They sure are! But they\u2019re in something like a submarine, right? Well, since the U.S. didn\u2019t really start using submarines<\/a> until the early 20th century and likely would not have needed them for a domestic war, it\u2019s safe to say this Confederate ship is not a sub. So the plan is to put everyone below deck except the son of the sea god and Clarisse and then to shoot their way into the ocean and just magically float to the surface? That\u2019s what they went with<\/a>, yeah. Is Percy\u2014the son of the literal god of the sea\u2014helpful during any part of this? He tells Clarisse, very helpfully, to \u201cGO!\u201d while they make their escape and then just kind of cowers in the corner while the ship makes its way to the surface. Is any of that in the book? You know the answer to that question already. <\/p>\n

More on \u2018Percy Jackson and the Olympians\u2019 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

More on \u2018Percy Jackson and the Olympians\u2019 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>We\u2019re Going to Circeland\u00a0<\/p>\n

This franchise really loves an abandoned<\/a> amusement<\/a> park<\/a>. Among all the small changes<\/a> that turned the fan base against this movie, its greatest sin might have been creating an abomination that should have been sentenced to Tartarus.<\/p>\n

After the \u201ckids<\/a>\u201d escape Polyphemus\u2019s lair with the golden fleece, they are ambushed by Luke and his goons, who want to use the fleece\u2019s power to bring Kronos back to life. In the books, you don\u2019t see Kronos rise and take a human host until the fourth installment, but Freudenthal might have seen the writing on the wall about this series\u2019 future and decided to go for broke.<\/p>\n

What that means in this context is portraying Kronos as a giant devilish monster<\/a> that kind of looks like if Mephisto<\/a> and the skeleton<\/a> from Zac Brown Band\u2019s concert at the Sphere did the fusion dance<\/a>. This movie is absolutely full of CGI nonsense, but this truly takes the cake. Did anyone ask for this? (I guess Luke did, but he gets eaten<\/a> shortly after his master\u2019s rebirth, so his opinion can be safely ignored.)<\/p>\n

While Kronos\u2019s various parts fly around the screen like a scene from Twisters, we are treated to Lerman climbing on one of those floating parts and stabbing Kronos in the heart, sending him back to his coffin. Nothing to see here, just one of the strongest beings in the known world being undone by a teenager with a cursed blade (that isn\u2019t even the real cursed blade<\/a>) in three minutes of screentime. When it\u2019s that easy, I guess there\u2019s no reason to keep the franchise going, huh?\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Wardrobe Department<\/p>\n

Finally, just a quick little aside here. Why do they have Luke and his demigod traitors dressed<\/a> like they\u2019re bad guys in Charmed<\/a>? Are you telling me that I\u2019m supposed to be afraid of this guy<\/a>?<\/p>\n

I\u2019d also like to subtract points for this era of fashion in general. Look what they have my protagonists wearing<\/a>, dawg. No one outside of Jennifer Lawrence<\/a> wants to return to the fashion of 2013. I will, however, add points back for the fun little<\/a> shirts<\/a> and wig that they put Stanley Tucci in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Admittedly, Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters could have been much worse\u2014hell, there\u2019s an argument for making it worse so it could enter the rarified<\/a> air<\/a> that makes something like Sony\u2019s superhero movies so fun to hate-watch. But a film with bad CGI, some bizarre dialogue\u2014except from you, Nathan Fillion, you\u2019re perfect<\/a>\u2014and a weird<\/a> obsession<\/a> with trying to make nectar seem like coffee isn\u2019t anyone\u2019s idea of a good time. In the end, all of its shortcomings ended up turning off potential new fans while also alienating the loyal audience that the books had cultivated, and that was enough for Riordan to \u201c[write] off Hollywood for a long, long time.\u201d The streaming series, thankfully, has avoided these problems and is already off to a great<\/a> start<\/a>. Here\u2019s hoping that we never see a large, poorly rendered Kronos invade our television screens anytime soon.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kellen Becoats<\/p>\n

<\/a>Kellen Becoats is a fact checker based in Brooklyn, New York. When he isn\u2019t complaining about the Bulls\u2019 incompetence, he can be found (loudly) advocating for women\u2019s sports.
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