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From the Page to the Screen – The Sea of Monsters

The Sea of Monsters is a very good sequel that trumped its predecessor in terms of enjoyment and quality. It continued Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series in a more confident style and tone. The book received a movie adaptation and it was the last time that this series was adapted into film.

THE FILM ADAPTATION

The movie was released in 2013, three years after the first film. It was a box office failure and a critical dud, resulting in the death of this franchise. It’s clear why this had to happen when the film was this mediocre and bland.

PLOT

While the novel was highly adventurous and classical in its spirit, the movie was anything but that. It was overly frenetic and action-oriented. They also included things from the future books that were unnecessary for this particular entry, resulting in a very messy script that just doesn’t work.

WINNER – BOOK

CHARACTERIZATION

Clarisse was good in this movie and so were Annabeth and Grover, but Percy was very bland and Tyson was ruined with bad casting and even worse special effects. The others were either sidelined or forgettable and the character relationships were simply not as emotionally impactful as they were in the source material.

WINNER – BOOK

EMOTION

The relationship between Tyson and Percy was the highlight of the book as its heart and soul. It was nowhere to be found in the movie unfortunately. The tone that was surprisingly comedic worked for the film, but the lack of any genuine emotion was a problem. The serious scenes were too uninspired and very badly written in dialogue.

WINNER – BOOK

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THEMES

Clearly the novel trumps the movie in this regard also. The themes of the dangers of prejudice and the importance of friendship were wonderfully explored. The movie, on the other hand, had nothing on its mind as it was more concerned with the action and the VFX.

WINNER – BOOK

TECHNICAL ASPECTS

While the writing from Rick Riordan got much improved for the second entry, especially in descriptions and characterization, the movie looked even worse than its predecessor with some questionable, already dated special effects and an overreliance on those effects.

WINNER – BOOK

BOOK 5: FILM 0

Overall, the novel is a wonderful read. It’s full of great adventurous elements and strong character arcs. The movie cemented the death of this franchise due to its terrible writing, horrible effects and plain uninspired acting. It’s all very mediocre.