So what I did this week was I tried to watch the second Percy Jackson film (The Sea of Monsters) while reading the third book in the Heroes of Olympus series, The Mark of Athena. If you're tempted to try it, really really don't.
First let me talk about The Mark of Athena. I enjoyed the first Percy Jackson series, but honestly I'm enjoying the second a hell of a lot more. I think the first series reads as if it's for a lot younger kids than this series does and so I find this one easier reading as I feel less like I'm being talked down to.
The basic idea of this series is pretty much that another (or pretty much the ultimate) godly bad guy (or girl... giving away nothing here!) is out to destroy the world and it's up to Percy and co to save it, again. This time there's an added twist though, which I won't talk about too much in case you want to read the series from the beginning, but basically there's a whole load of other characters involved in the whole world saving thing, including a guy called Jason, who is very Percy Jacksonesque...
If you've read any of the Percy Jackson books before we probably don't have to talk too much about what happens in this book. Some kids go on a quest. Various mythological figures appear, which is always fun because if you're like me you spend a good few minutes trying to remember who they are and why you know their name and what happened to them, and there's lots of action and cryptic clues and people having to face their worst nightmares. All very gripping stuff, I have to say, and The Mark of Athena was probably my favourite so far for how all the characters storylines from both this series and the last are coming together in unexpected ways.
So that's the good stuff over. Now, The Sea of Monsters. I should have been apprehensive because my 13 year old brother lent me the movie and told me that it wasn't as good as either the book, or the first movie. I thought he was exaggerating, but he really wasn't. Honestly we stopped watching after about 20 mins, we just couldn't handle it anymore.
This will be a list of ranting. Firstly WHAT THE HELL, CHARLIE?!!! I thought, after seeing the awesomeness that was The Perks of Being a Wallflower and discovering that Logan Lerman can really act, that this film was bound to be better than the first Percy Jackson film, because why go backwards, right? But no. Never have I seen a brilliant actor so fully convince me that he can't act at all. Gah.
Secondly (and you'll have to excuse my language, I don't often swear on this blog - reality is a different kettle of fish - but this calls for it) what the fuck is up with them sexing up all the female characters? That's entirely not the point of them. The thing I like most about the girls in Percy Jackson is that the focus is mostly on their personalities and how cool/annoying/clever/whatever they are, but when I saw the actress playing Clarisse I thought I was actually going to cry. As far as I can remember, her physical appearance isn't mentioned that much, but never ever did I imagine the girl who flushes people's heads down the toilet looking like this:
It's like they were afraid to put a girl in this movie who wasn't perfectly groomed, pretty good looking and had a perfect figure. It made me seriously angry and was pretty much the reason we stopped watching in the end.
I felt like they were trying to pull the same kind of attention for The Sea of Monsters as The Hunger Games did, and that was just never going to happen. I'm disappointed because I liked the first film and I hoped this would be good, and frankly if they bother making a third one I'll be warning everyone against wasting their time and money.
Apparently this film made me angry.
