Movie Review: Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters

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

NaNoWriSe Day 11 (Little progress in writing, but the editing keeps coming)

I've been doing lots of editing today in order to prep my chapters for my editing group. I find that straight up writing has been eluding me for the past few days. Its a shame, since I have lots of time on my hands.
Its always when you're busy that you have the most inspiration.
Still, editing continues to be a rewarding experience. It feels as if my work is rising in quality with ever little error I correct. Not to mention those who have given me edits have great suggestions that have helped me improve upon my novels.
I'm beginning to think NaNoWriSe won't be as fruitful as I might have hoped in the writing category but I think it will be in the editing end of things. Even if I don't write six books, I should get a few rough drafts done at least. That's enough for me.
Writing is such a long, seemingly endless process. You have to wonder sometime why so many of us enjoy it so much. Are we masochists or do we genuinely love each moment we spend hovered over our keyboards, typing away.
I'd like to believe the latter is true. If I didn't enjoy this with every fiber of my being, I wouldn't be doing it. There is no love hate relationship with writing. There is only love.
The love-hate relationship is reserved for querying, but you can't adore EVERYTHING you do.
Keep following my journey, all you who are out there (That is of course, assuming anyone reads this blog). I imagine I'll have some success by the end of it.

NaNoWriSe Day 9 (Predicaments galore)

Funny enough, only a day after posting my break through post, it turned out that a lot of people liked my prologue and first chapter. I don't know how much I like it but they liked it.
However, I want to continue to see what my editing group thinks of my book as is before changing everything.
The main issue that comes with my book, Children of Ink, is POV. I hate confining POV to one character but I like the intamacy that a first person POV provides. The result is me choosing one character for first person and everyone else's POV being in third person. This is a bit unorthodox but that is how Children of Ink is written. it really can't be confined to one POV to tell the story it needs to. If all else fails I'll have to make it straight third person or straight first person. Both will be difficult for me.
For now, let's see how my editing group takes the odd POV mash up. Maybe they'll like it. Who knows?
Now off to editing! (This really is turning into a month of more editing than writing. Ah well... as long as something is getting done.)

NaNoWriSe Day 8 (Break through!)

So I'm back after a two day absence. Sorry about that.
I was feeling relatively dry of words but I participated in an editing group with two of my complete projects. I figured if I couldn't write, I could edit. With one of my projects, a Young Adult Urban Fantasy, I've had problems with the beginning and the POV for awhile. I love the project and the characters but the beginning is just tough.
But finally, I found light at the end of the tunnel. Somehow, one of the edits someone gave me caused an explosion in my mind. A break through! I knew exactly how to fix my problems with the beginning AND the POV to make it easier to swallow. This should end up tightening the novel as a whole. It will require rewriting half of the book but I don't care! If it makes it better, I'm all for it.
Thanks editing group. You have opened new doors. And now: Off to writing!

NaNoWriSe Day 5 (World building)

Oh, editing. You are such an untamable monster that hides behind corners and waits to gobble me up. You snicker in the shadows saying "Authoress, you forgot to think about this. Authoress, your world building needs work!"
The latter item was the issue today as I discovered I don't have a clear timeline for past events that happened before my book is set. The years are kind of important because they have to coincide with the ages of characters and their jobs and education and all of that good stuff.
Fortunately I nailed down my timeline today. The problem will be implementing it and making sure all of my dates are consistent.
That will be for tomorrow though. On the plus side I've joined a writing group for Speculative Fiction so I hope to get some editing done on some of my first chapters of my books. I'm excited about that. That will help me through the editing process a bit and allow me to focus on the writing part of NaNoWriSe.
Another only semi productive day down. And now, it's time for sleep. Happy NaNoWriSe everyone!

NaNoWriSe Day 4 (The wonders of Editing)

I was so busy yesterday I forgot to post last night. Oops.
No matter. Busy is a good thing. I got a descent amount of writing done on my YA Fantasy and I've gotten my query for my speculative fiction novel mostly edited. Now I just have to finish editing the actual novel. Still, having the query done kind of makes me feel good.
Let's talk about query letters shall we? One of my first posts was on query letters and how hard they are. I've actually come to terms with query letters now. They are no longer as hard for me to work out and they come a bit more naturally. That way when I post them on forums for critques, people are more nitpicking than rewriting my whole query.
It's nice because I can offer everything I've learned from writing queries to help other writers who are in the same place I was a year or so ago. I actually enjoy giving people feedback and helping them rearrange their work.
Editing is actually kind of fun, at least when it comes to other people's work. This is a strange revelation for me because I HATE editing my work. But helping other people can be very entertaining. I wonder why that is.
Speaking of editing, that's what I'm doing today... Sigh... wish me luck!

NaNoWriSe Day 3 (Some progress)

Got back from Disney World at 12:00 yesterday and immediately crashed without writing, but who can blame me?

Fortunately there were some helpful plot bunnies today. I wrote a fight scene that I'm rather happy with. Fight scenes can often be difficult, given that some moves are difficult to translate into words. This one turned out well though.

The subject of progress today was my Young Adult Fantasy. The working title is Double Edged Blades but that could very well change. I'm certainly enjoying my characters but I think the most difficult part will be keeping the plot moving along.

Still, every chapter I complete is another step towards a finished manuscript so I shall trek on. I plan to wake up earlier tomorrow to get a jump on the day.
In the mean time, happy NaNoWriSe everyone!