Before the reboot on Disney+ arrives next year, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: Lightning Thief The first came out a few decades ago. While it was successful enough to warrant a sequel, Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, it did not please the fan base of the novel. Most fan bases include book authors, Rick Riordan, chose to ignore the film as if they were not there at all because they are not so good as a representative of the book. How can a man who brings so much success (and honesty)? Harry Potter Set with the screen mess up this set a lot? How will the series be surprised when Riordan himself wrote to the filmmakers to avoid the changes they made?
The Percy Jackson movie changed too much from the book
In November of 2018, just when the possibility of a Percy Jackson A reboot is looming, Rick Riordan made a statement about his time while discussing the film. He also gave us the opportunity to read excerpts of the email he sent to the producer when noting his concerns about the adaptation. It’s too much to cover everything here, but it’s a good read, and you should check it out. It is especially enlightening if you want to understand how the Hollywood machine works with authors (or rather … not) with some names that we can add. In this email, he explained all of his concerns, then went to three key areas for improvement: age appropriateness, story structure, and writing. It’s actually a funny read (even more so when the movie takes all the humor out) as Riordan leaves them with “I don’t need to be the Oracle of Delphi to predict what’s going to happen” if they move forward with the script he’s given.
Readers who have not read the books (or readers who read these books as children and have since forgotten) may ask what has changed. Of course, it can not be everything. It is everything. Quite literally, everything loved about the book is changed in the film adaptation. Percy and his friends are 12 years old in the first book, getting older each time until they reach 16 in the last book of the original series. This is important because there is a prophecy (not in the movie!) that says Percy will decide to destroy the world or save it. The book is also full of puns, while the movie goes with a more serious tone. The movie starts with Percy at 17. It’s a pretty surprising choice when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (with the same director, Chris Columbus, no less!) began the series in the same structure. The actors are almost perfect too, if they made the movie before the previous year. Logan Lerman, Alexandra DaddarioAnd Brandon T. Jackson Everyone does their best with what they are given. This is not where the changes stop. The beginning is good, but the main structure of the search is completely changed.
As Percy is falsely accused of stealing lightning, he travels across the country with Annabeth and Grover to find his mother, as well as confronting the god Hades, who he believes actually stole Zeus’s. He could not fly across the continent, because “Zeus would drag him out of the sky.” Instead, the movie turns this into a quest for “Persephone’s Pearls” which is a lazy mcguffin to take them across the country, and throws in almost every cool spot they do in the book, like St. Louis Arch, and replace it with a lackluster A to B plan. Although I will admit, the Lotus Casino “Poker Face” sequence is pretty fun. By doing this, it cuts the main antagonist of the novel. No, not Luke, but the war god Ares and whoever he works for (we’ll get to that later). The film also fumbles in the management of the end. Percy shouldn’t have saved his mother, he had to leave her behind. Only able to free her when he proved to Hades that he did not steal. In the movie, he leaves Grover in the underworld and leaves with his mother. He is completely out of character in the movie, because he should care more about his friends. There’s too much wrong with it to make it too long, so definitely go check out Riordan’s write-up about this experience.
The Percy Jackson movies are bad as a franchise
Yes Percy Jackson The film also failed to become a franchise. You’d think the producers would want it to do well, and keep making sequels for years to come. Except it seems that no one bothers to read the next book to see what is important. The biggest problem with this is the Titan, Kronos, the father of Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, who is in the process of returning from the depths of Tartarus. While nothing more than an afterthought in the first movie, he is the main villain in the second movie, and Percy is too won He is in the second movie! Kronos returned two movies too soon, immediately cutting off any pressure for the final battle in the hypothetical fifth movie that would have happened if they had tried some.
Another small inconsistency that cannot be established is Percy’s rivalry with Clarisse, which is a large part of the novel. Annabeth should have a crush on Luke as well, setting up a love triangle between her, Luke and Percy. Grover continues to search for the god Pan, explaining his absence from Camp Half-Blood Sea of Monsters book. In the movie, he doesn’t go searching, and Pan is not mentioned. And where is Percy’s blue food and Camp Half-Blood orange shirt while we’re at it?
Will the new Percy Jackson series be a fresh start?
Of course, we have a new series that is expected in 2024. And if Uncle Rick sticks to his word about the adaptation preferences, “Am I talking about it? Promoting it? Sharing something cool? I might be happy.” Well, he talked about it. Percy Jackson and the Olympians There should be a comic con panel. Even during the strike, writers and actors are now canceled. Riordan and the new trio Walker Scobell, Leah JefferiesAnd Aryan Simhadri There has been a lot of enthusiasm about the project in the past, which is good for the project. Until the writers and actors reach a fair deal, we probably won’t hear too much about this series until the trailer drops. But with a new age-appropriate character, Riordan on the team, this could finally be a good new start for Percy Jackson. One we deserved well over a decade ago. Hopefully one day studios and producers will understand that being unfaithful to the core themes of the source material will mean the project is dead on arrival.
Big picture
- The Percy Jackson movie is a disappointment to fans and authors because of their poor representation of the book.
- The movie changed everything that was loved about the book, including the age of the characters and the tone of the story.
- The movie also fails to set up future sequels and overlooks key points and character movements from the books, ultimately ruining any potential for a successful franchise.
