Director Thor Freudenthal (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) brings young hero Percy Jackson back to make his second big-screen debut in Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters. Set to be released on Aug. 16, 2013, the film continues the tale of Percy (Logan Lerman), a demigod who has begun to fade from fame after preventing a civil war between Zeus and Poseidon. Struggling to find his place in life, Percy is conveniently presented with some world-saving, monster-defeating adventure when the magical barriers of Camp Half-Blood are attacked. With the help of old friends Grover Underwood (Brandon T. Jackson) and Annabeth Chase (Alexandra Daddario) as well as Percy’s one-eyed half-brother Tyson (Douglas Smith), Percy sets out on a journey to find the Golden Fleece, the only thing that stands between Camp Half-Blood and total annihilation. The group travels to the Sea of Monsters (“what humans call” the Bermuda Triangle) in search of the prized object, running into a myriad of mythological beasts and vengeful enemies along the way.
With its stellar onscreen effects, fusion of mythology with contemporary young adult fiction and its family friendly PG rating, Sea of Monsters, if anything, brings to the table a new form of intermediate film creation—a process that produces a final product free of any eyebrow-raising scenes that might be uncomfortable for young adults to sit through with their parents watching. While this focus allows for more examination of the intriguing storyline of the film rather than engaging with the common, shallow themes of many young adult films and literature, concerns do emerge that the plot does, indeed, get lost behind the mind-blowing technological enhancements and mythological jargon that dot the film constantly. While exposure to mythology is helpful to the movie-goer, the consistent name-dropping without a full or accurate explanation may cause some unrest amongst the mythological gurus out there.
The film’s fictional and creative directives, taken from the many books written about Jackson and his demigod crew, do, in the very least, provide some good old-fashioned entertainment for audiences worldwide, especially with its clever mythological twists and turns. As long as the movie-goer doesn’t expect a true mythological history lesson, the film should be enjoyable for most.