His friends know him as Captain Mal Reynolds, your grandparents probably know him as Castle, and your mother most definitely knows him as Captain Hammer, but whatever name he’s going by, actor Nathan Fillion is one righteous dude. So righteous that it comes as no surprise he’s set to play a God in his next feature film role. THR reports that Fillion will be playing Hermes in the upcoming Percy Jackson sequel, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters. Not only is Hermes that God who can run really fast while wearing sandals, but in the Percy Jackson mythos he’s also the father of the Luke character, who is the bad guy played by Jake Abel. Luke is an angry young man, and he and his father don’t always see eye to eye, so this role should allow Fillion ample opportunity to utilize his concerned dad brow furrow.

Despite the fact that this series is all about characters from Mount Olympus, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters is looking to Thor for direction. Close enough, I guess it’s all mythology. When I first heard that a series about a boy with magic powers who discovers that he has a very interesting ancestry, which was once helmed by Chris Columbus, was going to continue with another sequel I got confused. Wasn’t Harry Potter supposed to be over? Okay, obvious joke, but it was pretty pathetic how closely Columbus and the marketing people on the first Percy Jackson tried to tie this already derivative sequel to the Harry Potter franchise aesthetically. Hopefully, with a new director on, this second film can go in a new direction. But seeing as how Thor Freudenthal’s previous work on films like Hotel for Dogs and Diary of a Wimpy Kid doesn’t share much with these tween fantasy series, it’s kind of hard to tell if he’s the right man to give this series its own sense of identity. I guess the best we can hope is that he has some mode other than “movie you would see on the Disney Channel on a Sunday afternoon,” which is all I’ve seen from him so far. What we do know about this new film is that Logan Lerman is once again signed to star as Percy, and the story follows the pursuits of Percy and a group of his friends as they seek

It is quite possible that large portions of Diary of a Wimpy Kid will be lost on some people. However, those folks out there in the target age of the books, those currently in middle school and those of us who vividly remember their middle school experiences should find something in there to relate to.

Kevin Carr sits his chubbiness down weighs in on The Bounty Hunter, Repo Men and Diary of a Wimpy Kid.