BEFORE: From one film that referenced Greek myths (sort of, namely Orpheus) to another. Linking from "The Book of Life", Ron Perlman carries over. Three more films before I go on hiatus for about a month.
THE PLOT: In order to restore their dying safe haven, the son of Poseidon and his friends embark on a quest to the Sea of Monsters to find the mythical Golden Fleece while trying to stop an ancient evil from rising.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief" (Movie #922)
AFTER: This plays as sort of a cross between the famous Greek myths, and a franchise along the lines of "Harry Potter", because there's a school for kids with superpowers, though in this case they're not witches or half-muggles, they're the children of gods, or "half-bloods". We all know how much those Greek gods got around, they loved to romance humans. And animals. And basically anything. What's really more likely is that Greek men went off to war, and while they were gone their wives were sexually active, and then the husbands came home and wondered how their wives had become pregnant. Sure, it was the will of the gods - Zeus appeared in the form of a bull, or a swan, or a shower of gold, and it didn't take much for him to impregnate the helpless maid. Right.
Really, a film like this should fit right in with the superhero movies that are all the rage these days, because the comic books (Marvel, anyway) borrows liberally from the Greek/Roman pantheon, and also the Norse one. If Thor is popular, why not Apollo and Poseidon, or even their children? And I'm all for kids learning about the classic mythological characters, like Dionysus and centaurs and satyrs and such.
The problem here came whenever there was a need to impart information about Greek myths to the viewer. Expository information about, say, the Golden Fleece or how do defeat a Cyclops was spoken by characters so quickly that it was usually very hard to understand. And I can't say that things were 100% faithful to the myths, it seemed more like the rules were always being made up as the film went along, sort of a case of putting the chariot before the horse, to bring about the intended result.
But there was a lot of action, and the film worked as one of those quest-like stories, where people have to work together to find the object and defeat the evil power, even though that's all a bit formulaic by now. I don't see a third film scheduled on IMDB, which seems like a bit of a shame - I guess this series doesn't have the juice to go another round, it's probably going to fade out like the "Chronicles of Narnia" series did before they get to adapt all of the books in the series. Too bad the second film ends on a bit of a cliffhanger.
Also starring Logan Lerman (last seen in "The Patriot"), Alexandra Daddario (last seen in "Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief"), Brandon T. Jackson (ditto), Leven Rambin, Stanley Tucci (last seen in "Muppets Most Wanted"), Anthony Head (last seen in "The Iron Lady"), Jake Abel, Nathan Fillion (last heard in "Monsters University"), Missi Pyle (last seen in "The Artist"), Mary Birdsong, Yvette Nicole Brown (last seen in "The Island"), Paloma Kwiatkowski, with the voices of Shohreh Aghdashloo, Craig Robinson (last seen in "This Is the End"), Octavia Spencer (last seen in "The Help").
RATING: 6 out of 10 drachma
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