“Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters” is an action-packed movie with many greek mythology references. It is based off of the original young-adult fiction book, “Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters,” one of five books in the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan. This movie is intended for youths to young adults to watch. This story of both the book, and movie is a modernized, and transformed version of “Jason and the Golden Fleece”, created to show a new perspective on ancient myths.
In order to restore camp half-blood’s magical border from dying that repels dangerous mythical creatures that are considered a threat, Percy Jackson and his friends Annabeth, Grover, and Tyson go on a quest to the Sea of Monsters to find the mythical Golden Fleece to heal the protector (shield) of their camp, while trying to stop Luke from healing an ancient evil titan, Kronos from rising again. There are quite a couple differences between the story of Percy, and the story of Jason.
While Jason left Medea, who helped him the most during his quest, the story of Percy Jackson does not include Medea, and many other characters who mentor Jason, and is instead replaced by his group of friends. Percy Jackson, is not mentioned in greek myths. Although he was supposedly named after Perseus, son of Zeus, Percy is a “real” person. Annabeth, Grover and Tyson are also not in the original myths. Many of their character traits resemble those of their parents though.
Annabeth is a very wise, and smart girl, as her mother was Athena, goddess of wisdom. Percy and Tyson, both sons of Poseidon, god of the sea, have abilities to control water with their minds. This modernized version of a greek myth makes this event seem like it could re-occur anytime again during this time period, and makes it seem more appealing to the viewer, or reader. The movie starts with a flashback to years ago when there was no magical border.
Annabeth, Luke Grover, and Thalia are running away from monsters, trying to reach camp half-blood. Thalia sacrifices herself for others to be in safety, and her father Zeus decides to turn her into a magical tree that will always protect the camp. This is effective to the movie because it gives us some background information on some events in the past that explains who Thalia is, and how the magical tree came to be. Most of the story is shot from an eye-level, for a lot of the movie is the characters talking to one another.
When there were extreme-action scenes like the rise of Kronos, the music became fast, intense, and minor along with low key lighting to help create a stronger mood for the audience. A theme could be “respect those who help you”, because in the movie, even though the quest was supposed to be for Clarisse to accomplish, Percy and his friends snuck out to do it themselves too. Turns out, Clarisse did need help, but did not want it from Percy.
He ended up helping, and working together with her to finish the quest, and Clarisse finally acknowledges, and thanks Percy for the help, because she knew she couldn’t have done it alone. I think that the whole story was based on trust, and respect, or else none of the events would have happened. I personally thought that this movie was well done, and even though there were some differences from the book, the story is shown in a very lively, and more interactive way, which I think improves the story by a lot. I would recommend this movie to friends, whether they have read the book or not.
