Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters ~ review

 

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters is the sequel to the movie Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. Starring Logan Lerman as Percy Jackson alongside Brandon T. Jackson, Alexandra Daddario, Leven Rambin, Douglas Smith and Jake Abel, the movie follows Percy and his friends as they try to save the poisoned Thalia tree that has been protecting the Half-Blood Camp from their enemies. To do so, they must travel to the Sea of Monsters, or better known as the Bermuda Triangle, to find the Golden Fleece in order to cure the ailing tree. The movie is based on the second book of the Percy Jackson & the Olympians book series by Rick Riordan.

 

I'm not a reader of the novel which this movie was based from but I had a great time watching the first movie in the cinema when it came out, so I was looking forward to this movie when the studio announced that they were producing the film. But after watching it, to be honest, I think I like The Lightning Thief more than Sea of Monsters. Although the plot was overall good, it felt rushed at times and the story feel like it was not been carefully developed. This lead to inconsistency in which some scenes were felt really great while others felt like it was half-complete. But I really love the intro scene as well as the ending scene very much, the one involving Thalia, it's just the middle part of the movie which was a bit of a letdown.

The Wolverine ~ review

The Wolverine is the sequel to X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a spin-off movie of the X-Men movie franchise and set after the event of X-Men: The Last Stand. It starred Hugh Jackman, Tao Okamoto, Hiroyuki Sanada, Rila Fukushima, Svetlana Khodchenkova, Will Yun Lee and Famke Janssen. The film follows Logan / Wolverine as he travels to Japan to meet old acquaintance and, unexpectedly, new enemies as well as trying to coop with his own inner dilemma.

As one of the person who did not really like X-Men Origins: Wolverine (which I only watch on television), I decided to have more faith in The Wolverine and went to watch it in the cinema. Fortunately for me the movie turn out to be quite good. I really like the plot surrounding Logan's ability or mutant power of regeneration (which enables him to live longer than normal human being) in which he thought as more of a curse but valued by others who thought that the ability is indeed a blessing. Personally I think this is quite different than previous X-Men movies where mutant powers are usually scared by normal people or viewed as source of manipulation for weapon creation. But in this movie, it is viewed as a gift and being used in any way possible to assist in everyday life, in which in this movie it is to sustain the family business empire. Even most of the bad guys that Logan fought throughout the movie are normal people with no mutant powers whatsoever. In fact, mutant powers are not the main attraction of this movie as it usually are for previous movies in the franchise, and that I promise you, is not a bad thing at all. It allows the movie to focus on its characters and their struggles without being too distracted by the special effects coming from using the mutant powers. For that, I think this movie is unique and refreshing for a movie coming from the X-Men universe.