Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (2013)
Directed by Thor Freudenthal
In their quest to confront the ultimate evil, Percy and his friends battle swarms of mythical creatures to find the mythical Golden Fleece and to stop an ancient evil from rising.
13 connections found
View:
13 films that influenced Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
What critics say influenced Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
This new installment of the popular book series by writer Rick Riordan is even more “Potter”-ized with the young demigods gathered at Long Island’s Camp Half-Blood, essentially a Hogwarts in the woods, where they attend classes taught by venerable centaur Chiron (Anthony Head of TV’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) and Mr. D. (Stanley Tucci) as in Dionysus, who is constantly trying to pour himself a glass of wine that turns into water, facilitating a funny Jesus reference.
Anthony Head, who was a regular on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” also appears in this film as Chiron.
There’s also a Raiders of the Lost Ark homage so blatant that I thought I’d slipped into a parody film of some sort.
As with seemingly every tween-targeted franchise nowadays, Sea of Monsters owes a considerable debt to many better movies, most strikingly Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Large parts of the film directed by Thor Freudenthal (“Hotel for Dogs”) look so much like scenes from “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” I wondered, “When are the Nazis showing up?”
One of the pic’s rare moments of inspiration comes in detailing Kronos’ backstory, presented in an impressive sequence in which Percy perceives a stained-glass window come to life (not in the freaky “Young Sherlock Holmes” sense, but as an elegant standalone animated interlude).
The result: the moppy-headed fellow son of Poseidon spends most of the movie looking like Brendan Fraser in “ Encino Man .”
Advertisement
One scene brings to mind The Hunger Games, though the Potter vibe is more often palpable.
This new Percy Jackson film also boasts Nathan Fillion as Hermes, god of UPS, apparently; a cyclops half brother of Percy named Tyson (Douglas Smith); and tiresome braggart Clarisse (Leven Rambim of “The Hunger Games”), daughter of Ares.
There’s the usual basic character arcs at play: Percy is afraid he won’t live up to his potential, Annabeth is prejudiced against a half-cyclops named Tyson (Douglas Smith), and Clarisse is an insufferable ass (you may recognize Ms. Rambin from The Hunger Games, in which she also played an insufferable ass).
He is often teased by the Xena-like daughter of Ares Clarisse La Rue (Leven Rambin of “The Hunger Games”).
The Stygian witches turn up as cab drivers in a frenetic goof of a sequence, squabbling as always over that lone eyeball and suggesting the free-spirited grossness of Peter Jackson 's The Frighteners.
Regardless of the fact that Guggenheim’s scripting may be a side product of condensing Rick Riordan’s novel — one would assume that while they’re in the business of pilfering from Potter (Riordan’s novels were published in 2005 – J.K Rowling’s first Potter novel was published in 1997 & Philosopher’s Stone was released cinematically in 2001) they should take cues from post-Cuaròn Potter (HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN); honour the ‘essential/elemental’ story i.e. shifted the focus to Harry as the central figure at the expense of slavish adherence to every detail.
Later, there’s the intimidating sea-monster Charybdis, who looks like Return of the Jedi on the outside, and The Empire Strikes Back on the inside, a big, burly Manticore, and the hulking, dread-locked Polyphemus, voiced with craggy ill-will by none other than Ron Perlman.
Advertisement
Whatever the case and pedigree, Thor has arrived to take over the sequel and thus has now replaced the legendary Italian explorer who "discovered" the New World before going on to direct "Home Alone," "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" and the first adaptation of Rick Riordan's book series, "Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief."
Although mercifully coming in at under epic length, the Thor Freudenthal-directed Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, which actually runs about 10 minutes shorter than its 2010 predecessor, lacks the energetic zip of the Chris Columbus-helmed installment.