Movie Background
One of the movies that were released in 2013 is Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters. It is a fantasy-adventure movie based on the original book story, which was written by Rick Riordan. The movie is 2010’s The Lightning Thief sequel and the second installment in Percy Jackson movie series. Produced by Karen Rosenfelt, Chris Columbus and Mark Radcliffe, together with Thor Freudenthal as the director, Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters was released on 7th August 2013 (imdb.com).
How and Why It Was Made
In the beginning of the movie development, the first sequel of the movie was directed by Chris Columbus. However, for this second installment, Chris Columbus along with Karen Rosenfelt became its producers and giving the directing project to Thor Freudenthal, which was announced way back October of 2011. As the filming development goes, a brand new list of production was released on 13th January 2012, which stated that this movie will be filmed between 26th April 2012 and 11th July 2012, and so the marketing of this movie began in July 2013, when they released video promotions of the film through YouTube.
The movie runs about an hour and forty five minutes in which the total movie time was able to compress everything that was written in the book and compiled in an artistic way using dazzling effects. The movie’s third dimension version was able to portray its use of technological advancement as the film’s picture was more realistic enough to enjoy by moviegoers. Its computer-generated scenes gave welcome distractions that came from the attractive anodyne yet neutral young leads (livemint.com).
Percy Jackson’s used a sword in this film, which was made out of Celestial Bronze. This type of material was portrayed as only effective on titans, gods, giants and even demigods.
This second sequel of Percy Jackson Movie was created to more thrilling adventure of the main character Percy portrayed by Logan Lerman, as it serves as a continuation, but totally different struggle of the movie characters. Just like other movie sequels, this film gave exciting scenes that Percy Jackson fans will surely watch the upcoming sequels of such just like Harry Potter or Resident Evil as examples.
Movie Costs and Earning Success
This second sequel of Percy Jackson Movie costs a total of 90 million US dollars and serves as its budget. The movie used extra ordinary props that made it more realistic compare to other films. As the movie has shown, they put a big portion of the budget to create special effects that gave more value to the movie.
This movie earned a total of more than $66 million domestically. It is 35% of its total global earnings as it has a worldwide sale of more than $124 million or 65% of its total earnings, giving it a total of more than $191 million earnings domestically and globally combined. This film ranked fourth from between August 9 and 11 or its first week with a total weekend gross sale of more than $ 14 million within the three thousand thirty one theatres. It went from rank number four down to number six on its second week having a total weekend sale of more than $ 8 million. As the film continues to be shown in theatres, its ranking went down to it eleventh week as it went down to number twenty three having a total sale of more than $300 thousand within three hundred and fifty theatres (boxofficemojo.com).
It was a success for this movie as it was able to have some tie-ins with some TV outfits and programs such as MTV Asia and some online sellers that sell Percy Jackson merchandise.
Production Challenges
As an interview with the director, Thor Freudenthal directed totally different movie genre prior to this film. His challenge was handling this type of movie in which portrays obvious cinematic effects. However, Freudenthal surpassed the challenge by reminding himself that despite the visual effects of the movie, he said that he had to remind himself constantly that this movie is about the characters, not the visual effects itself, along with his animation education background (hollywoodreporter.com).
Another challenge, if not a problem that the casts and production team of this film the heavy effects that needs to be very good versus the actors and actresses acting. The characters needed to have an acting talent that will suit the effects.
As for scripts, it was a challenging part for the writers to create scripts that would somehow make the story similar from what was written in the book. They have to write scripts that will make the characters portray what was in the book. The attempt to adapt Sea of Monsters was primarily unsure when it initially failed to please the film’s producers. However, Marc Guggenheim was able to work with his craft in creating a good screenplay of this movie and made it back on track.
Movie Critics
Los Angeles Times said that this film portrayed more than what a simple Greek Mythology is about. Although it has more mature characters than the book, LA Times said that this film would elude younger moviegoers than the more mature ones. They added that young teens must be adequately distracted by this film’s heroic mayhem and brisk pace that is, if they are not unnerved by this movie’s at times dark imagery (hollywoodlife.com).
RogerEbert.com, however, says that the film has a witty and multi-layered point of view of a teen. Additionally it says that the movie’s screen writer, Marc Guggenheim, talent to create a one-note slogan is a calling card (hollywoodlife.com).
Conclusion
The film’s plotline was simple, yet able to show what the story was about. However, there may have some opportunities to improve such as being more detailed when it comes to dialogue and some short scripts. The characters of the movie were able to portray their own roles, but as for my view, it would have been better if they have younger characters that are able to represent the roles as to make it more similar to the book so that once a reader watch this film, he or she can relate to the movie easily. Moreover, the acting was fair as it shows that the casts prepared for their role and made themselves into the scripts. When it comes to editing, it had a good outcome as it seems that the editor was able to capture the director’s vision and just as the movie outcome showed; he seemed able to work properly with his cinematographers as well as with the sound editor. The total picture of this film can be considered more than enough to produce a quality fantasy movie.
Works Cited
Ford, Rebecca. "'Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters' Director Promises Loyalty to Books With Added Humor (Q&A)." The Hollywood Reporter. N.p., 6 Aug. 2013. Web. 27 Oct. 2013.
"Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (2013) - Weekend Box Office Results." Box Office Mojo. imdb.com, n.d. Web. 27 Oct. 2013.
"Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (2013)." IMDb. amazon.com, n.d. Web. 27 Oct. 2013.
Ramnath, Nandini. "Film Review | Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters - Livemint." http://www.livemint.com/. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Oct. 2013.
