Harry Potter might have ridden off into the sunset as the highest-grossing film series of all time, but a significant part of the film series' legacy has been studios snatching up popular YA (young adult) novels and trying to start a profitable movie franchise with it. For the most part, it's been a real challenge for studios to try and duplicate the success of the Potter movies, with film adaptations of A Series of Unfortunate Events, Eragon, and the Narnia films to some extent, failing to strike gold in Potter's, and Warner Bros., wake. In fact, the closest film series which copied WB's similar formula with Potter and see domestic and international success has been The Twilight Saga, and even there, the series has been mixed with fanboys and critics at best, and panned, lampooned and heavily criticized at worst, depending on the installment. 20th Century Fox took a shot at making their Harry Potter-like franchise tent pole with Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief in early 2010 to a surprisingly solid box office returns internationally, and good no's here at home, as the first installment made $88 million and additional $135+ in international markets, bringing the total figure to over $220 million worldwide. So naturally, a sequel was sure to follow, and sure enough, the son of Poseidon and his demigod friends are back for the sequel, titled Sea of Monsters.
In this installment, Percy Jackson (once again played by Logan Lerman) must rescue Camp Half-Blood by retrieving the Golden Fleece, before an ancient evil destroys their home and possibly, the entire world. The tone and the atmosphere is darker than last time, yet still able to throw in a few comic set pieces, similar to the style of the film series i've already mentioned countless times in this review. It's the next step for the studio to try and advance another film series that isn't X-Men and strangely enough, i'm all for it. The Lightning Thief was actually enjoyable, despite the fact it was a cash in on the enormous success of the Potter series, and the spin on ancient Gods, demigods, and Greek mythology was an interesting premise and clearly the filmmakers and the cast had great fun playing around with the source material. I doubt we'll see another series like the Harry Potter Saga, or even the Lord of the Rings Trilogy for that matter in my lifetime, but Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters makes no bones about what it's supposed to be: a breezy, enjoyable popcorn flick. Add this to my upcoming list of movies you should see during the summer movie season, which you will see within the coming week or two.
I was looking forward to watching the James Franco/Seth Rogen comedy The Interview on Christmas Day, even more so than Angelina Jolie's WWII drama Unbroken , or Rob Marshall's Into the Woods . I like what the writing and directing duo of Rogen and his pal Evan Goldberg have done with comedies like Superbad , Pineapple Express and their debut feature, This Is the End . In light of Sony being hacked (which now appears to be North Korea's doing) and threats of attacking theaters that carry the comedy, three things happened today: 1.) Every major theater chain - AMC, Regal, Cinemark, Arclight, etc, had decided to pull out from showing The Interview on its scheduled release date. 2.) This prompted Sony Pictures to basically cancel the release date of the film amid threats of blowing up theaters. 3.) Both Sony and the theater chains basically caved into the demands of cyber terrorism from North Korea. Are you fucking kidding me? We just caved into terrorist d
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