Dear Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters,
You know, I remember when I saw your older brother. I felt quite miffed about changes they made to the book and characters. Changes that, I felt, were unnecessary. But I thought it functioned relatively well as a movie in it's own right. For the most part. (I'm not going to go into Persephone and how much wrongness happened on that front)
Well, Sea of Monsters. You clearly decided to push new boundaries with quality, showing us the lengths a sequel can go to to recover from the failings of the former. So I believe thanks is in order.
First of all, I'm so glad that you decided to make your own opening. I mean, sure, I can see why a dodge ball game with monsters wouldn't be at all exciting. Not to mention better at establishing the character of Tyson before Percy realizes what he is. I'd say this paints their relationship in too positive a light. it makes Percy seem like a decent and non racist person. Which of course we can't have, can we movie? We need your forced conflict. We should have Percy be as selfish and mean as possible to his brother for the majority of the movie.
I'm also glad that we chose not to have Grover captured at the beginning of the movie. After all, isn't that too good of a motivation for Percy to go on a quest? In the book his dilemma with his father not talking to him was a side conflict, pushed aside because he was afraid for his friend. Its a good thing that in the movie he only decided to go on the quest that didn't belong to him because he wanted to be special and prophesy worthy. Going after Grover would be too selfless a motivation. We can't have ourselves liking Percy, can we? And we NEEDED Grover's unbelievable wit. What is our movie without Grover's wit?
And thank you for making Annabeth weak and useless. I always thought that she had too strong a head on her shoulders, being a daughter of Athena. I'm glad you've put her back in her place: looking to Percy for everything. No longer is her character burdened by smarts or clever ideas. Ideas are Percy's job, messiah that he is. And after all, she's JUST the daughter of wisdom. Thank goodness we took out her flaw of hubris and replaced it with good old fashion racism. That makes her even more likable.
Now to be fair, she was racist in the books. Just better written and more complex.
You know what wasn't in the books? Kronos. No. No Kronos wasn't in the books. Not yet at least. Oh he made his little dream appearances and such and Luke was trying to resurrect him with the fleece. But he didn't almost come back to life at the end and have a huge battle. But who wants to see a climax with a giant cyclops?
We also really needed that scene in the belly of the giant monster, didn't we? Gosh. So much character development. Speaking of character development I'm glad we didn't have any sirens. It kept Annabeth from being burdened by depth and made sure that we didn't have any high emotional scenes.
Movie, you understood that far more emotion is found in a million death fake outs. Even though I didn't believe for a second that Grover, Percy, Annabeth or Tyson was dead any of the times you "killed" them, I felt such emotion in those scenes. Oh, and I'm glad you're going to fake kill of Luke every single movie. It really works with the realism of your script.
Not that the actors chose to have much emotion. I'm glad that the chemistry between these characters boiled like a stagnant puddle. It made me take every single attempt at emotion as a joke. This is good, since the actual jokes for the most part weren't funny. Thanks for keeping us on our toes.
Not that your script helped. The dialogue was written very poorly as if to show that you are willing to test the boundaries of cinema. Clever writing isn't needed, you tell us. Puns are the way of the future. And by writing in only a few clever moments we make the audience cherish the laughs they have. This is a true message on life. The amusing is finite. We must appreciate it when it comes in the form of Hermes and Dionysus.
What I'm really trying to say, movie, is that you are a piece of poorly written, poorly acted, poorly paced, poorly plotted, unengaging, unfunny, cash-grabbing, passionless cinema and that, even removed from the book you did not follow, you do not work on a movie level. I am so glad that you proved that no one should have second chances, at least in the film world.
So we are left with these new facts: Percy is selfish, Annabeth is a useless racist, Clarice is awesome, just poorly written, Luke is the worst villain ever, Kronos can be defeated in a five minute battle and the sea of monsters only has one actual monster IN the sea.
But on the plus side, Tyson was adorable and the effects were good.
-Sincerely,
Authoress Anonymous
PS: I'm not even a hard core fan of the books and you still suck
