Percy Jackson star Logan Lerman responds to fan criticism, praises ‘good friend’ Emma Watson

Logan Lerman said ‘Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters’ is more faithful to the books after fans criticised ‘Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief’.

Talking to Yahoo! Movies UK, he said: “Were definitely closer to the source material, but not necessarily from the second book.  We’ve taken stuff form the later books, there’s a few things that we’ve mentioned. For fans talk ‘the prophecy’ is introduced into this. I think fans will be interested in that.”

[Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters 'obstacle course' clip]

“We responded a lot of the fan criticisms a little bit. We tried to make it a little bit closer in terms of small things, like changing Alex’s hair colour.”

Alexandra Daddario, who plays Annabeth Chase in the films, was criticised for being a brunette in ‘Lightning Thief’. Her character is blonde in the books, and she dyed her hair for ‘Sea of monsters’.

Lerman also said the sequel was funnier than the first film.

“It has a lot more humour as well”, he said. “It was in the material. In the script. They made it wittier and lighter at times in terms of the rapport between the main gang in the film.”

We also chatted to him about comparisons with ‘Harry Potter’ and his friendship with Emma Watson. See below.

He said it was a coincidence that he was working with Watson in ‘Noah’ so soon after making ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’.

“[Working with Emma again] wasn’t a plan. It kind of came together in the last minute. It’s pretty cool though. It happens so rarely that you get to work with the same actor twice in such a short period of time. She’s a good friend of mine.

“It was intimidating set, because it’s [director] Darren Aronofsky. It was nice to have the comfort and support of a friend and be like ‘okay we’re in this scary world together’.”

[Emma Watson was told to quit acting by university tutor]

He was also happy with inevitable comparisons between the ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Percy Jackson’ franchises.

“[The ‘Potter’ comparison] wasn‘t annoying” he said. “It’s very similar. ‘Percy Jackson’ and ‘Harry Potter’ are tonally similar films. Mainly the first one’s tonally similar, because we had Chris Columbus directing [he also helmed two ‘HP’ movies]. It doesn’t annoy me. I’m flattered. I mean ‘Harry Potter’ is huge. Apparently it’s very popular!”

Percy Jackson: Sea of monsters is out now.