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Kim Hollis: I guess it performed about as I expected it to - maybe on the low side of the opening number I thought we'd see. And yes, it's easy to knock Disney for this movie (and Lone Ranger for that matter), but I still find it disappointing that they're so transparent in their cash grabbiness. Of course they're in it to make money; still, Pixar has established over the years that people are perfectly willing to pay for original ideas with wonderful stories. I'm annoyed that they've taken advantage of the Pixar relationship for a sub-par project.

David Mumpower: We are uniform in our opinion that the movie's opening weekend and eventual worldwide revenue squarely place it in the Winners category. Our frustration stems from the fact that Pixar was as pure as anything we have ever seen in our lifetimes with regards to movies. When Disney acquired the animation house, the stated philosophy was that with John Lassiter still in charge, nothing would change. That has not happened. Pixar's quality has been diminished; in the process, their brand has been tarnished. With Planes, Disney is trying to distinguish that Pixar has nothing to do with the project and yet the association is inevitable. The existence of Planes validates many of the concerns that the presence of Disney would ruin what was pure about Pixar. People are hard on Planes because it embodies the worst case scenario for the Disney acquisition of Pixar. Planes is a financially driven, creatively bankrupt concept. Disney is getting their money at the expense of the Pixar brand.

Kim Hollis: Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters earned $14.4 million over the Friday-to-Sunday portion of the weekend, and totaled $23.3 million from Wednesday through Sunday. Why wasn't this one bigger?

Felix Quinonez: I think when it comes down to it there just wasn't any demand for the sequel. I mean the first one did OK but from what I've heard about it, it was a by the numbers, forgettable movie. I know it did better overseas but I also know the studios only get a percentage of that money so I really doubt that even after all was said and done, that the first movie was a big hit. Sometimes I think studios are just too stubborn to admit that maybe they were wrong about having found the next golden goose.

Bruce Hall: I guess Fox is just just going to keep releasing Percy Jackson movies until they run out of books to adapt, or they run out of money from nobody going to see them. Whichever comes first.

To be fair though, the original film was ultimately profitable, if not an outright success. I'm not sure anyone was clamoring for a sequel; they could have just quietly walked away from the franchise and the earth would have kept right on spinning. On the other hand, this isn't a studio-killing boondoggle like The Golden Compass. The reason Sea of Monsters exists is because it's embarrassing to bail on a franchise after one film both movies were (relatively) cheap to make, and that $137 million international gross the original earned more than made up for a tepid domestic haul. Despite cratering stateside, there's a strong possibility Sea of Monsters will do well enough internationally to make it worth...someone's time.

Kim Hollis: The first movie is barely remembered. It wasn't a bad movie, just kind of...there, and certainly not something that really justified a sequel. It'll probably do okay on home video, but people are a lot more selective about the kind of movies they spend their money on these days. If a movie just looks like a middling sequel in a franchise that doesn't have a lot of interest in the first place, why bother?

David Mumpower: The core concept for a sequel is to capitalize upon the credibility established by the prior film. I am fervently convinced that if we did a list of fake films and included Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief among the selections, few North Americans would recognize it as the real production. It was utterly forgettable in every sense of the world, another of the batch of Harry Potter wannabes that received an unjustified greenlight a few years ago. Almost all of those projects failed to some degree and yes, Percy Jackson was one of them. It earned less domestically than its budget and we all know by now how overstated the value of worldwide box office is. The primary difference between Percy Jackson and stuff like Eragon is that the people involved with the latter production were realistic about the film's performance. Eragon actually earned more worldwide with $250 million compared to $226.5 million; their budgets were only $5 million different. Why was there no Eragon sequel? Studio bosses were good enough at math and logic to accept that the attempt at a franchise launch had failed. For whatever reason, the folks supporting Percy Jackson were less rational, which directly led us to the current conversation. We are now forced to debate the obvious. Nobody wanted this sequel.

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