Skip to main content

Mr. Brown's Trailer Reviews: Percy Jackson - Sea of Monsters

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.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mr. Brown Verses Bland, Weepy Teen Melodrama

Todd in the Shadows once said that he defined the worst hit song of the calendar year as a song being the absence of good. At the time, I didn't really understood what he meant when he chose "Tonight Tonight", by Hot Chelle Rae in 2011 and "Roar", by Katy Perry in 2013. Last night, I finally understood what he meant. Because, I, too, have seen a movie that's the absence of good. Todd meant that a song could make you angry, the beat could drive you insane, the lyrics could be insulting and simply lazy, but, in his eyes, those two aforementioned songs had nothing  going for them. Nothing lyrically, nothing catchy, nothing offensive, nothing that could make you feel insulted, angry or simply seeing red, because there's literally nothing  about it that can make you feel anything. That movie belongs to Bland, Weepy Teen Melodrama , the  latest attempt to suck money out of teen girls ....I mean, young adult novel by Second Rate Nicholas Sparks that became ...
Post a Comment
Read more

What We Talk About When We Talk About Great Movies: The 10 Best Films of 2014 - Part II

And here's (finally) part two of my list of the best from last year, along with the full list at the bottom. 5. The Wind Rises  - The worst thing I can honestly say about this gorgeous animated feature is that, at 126 minutes, it wasn't long enough. I could get lost in Hayao Miyazaki's final effort for hours and not get bored. The writer-director-animator is a master of whisking us away to new worlds of his own creation, but how fitting that his last masterwork is where we're rooted into the past as Miyazaki tells the story of real-life Jiro Horikoshi as he lives out his dreams of building airplanes, despite them being used for the Imperial Army back in World War II. Every last frame of this film - from Jiro's dreams with fellow designer Giovanni Caproni and his brief romance with Nahoko, to showing the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1932 and his journey to Nazi Germany several years later - is painstakingly beautiful and artfully crafted to within an inch of his...
1 comment
Read more

I'm Dreaming of a White Oscars

What does Stephen Hawking, the godfather of computer science, a hotel manager breaking out from prison during the first World War, a young boy and his family growing up through 12 years and the battle of wills between a aspiring musician and his near-abusive professor have in common? On the surface, these are different films ranging in different subjects. But when you look at the people who stared, wrote and directed these various movies, A few patterns begin to emerge: 1. The cast is predominately white. 2. The story mostly centers on a male protagonist. 3. The filmmakers behind the project are white and male. And all of those films I've mentioned:  The Theory of Everything , The Imitation Game , The Grand Budapest Hotel , Boyhood  and Whiplash  - have all been nominated for Best Picture for this year's 87th annual Academy Awards. Before I go any further, I just want to say that this is not an attack on the films themselves. Most of the films mentioned I really...
2 comments
Read more