Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief was an amazing book that was perfect for getting children and teenagers to appreciate and learn about Greek mythology in a way they could understand. The same, however, cannot be said for the movie adaptation.
The film was completely ruined by the script, if the only thing wrong with it was the age of the actors, then maybe fans wouldn’t have been so disappointed with it, and we would have seen the rest of the series getting their own adaptations. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Rick Riordan himself has made it known that he wanted nothing to do with the films when he saw the disappointing scripts. Riordan told one fan, “it's my life's work going through a meat grinder” and I couldn’t agree more. Riordan worked hard on those books, a lot of time, effort and research had to go into them and for the filmmakers to butcher his life’s work so terribly is an insult to Riordan and fans. When I watched the film, it seemed as though the scriptwriters hadn’t even read the books properly and thus missed out a lot of little details that just made the books. Get ready for a reallyyyy long list:
Nancy Bobofit doesn’t exist.
We don’t get the whole scene where Percy overhears Chiron and Grover talking about the whole Mrs. Dodds scene.
No Clarisse and thus no “toilet scene”.
Mr. D is also seemingly non-existent.
Chiron tells Percy who his godly parent is, rather than Percy being claimed by Poseidon himself.
Grover is unlikeable. In the books he seems so sweet, but in the film he was constantly making inappropriate jokes.
Annabeth’s personality is inaccurate, it’s the opposite of her personality in the books.
The oracle of Delphi also didn’t exist.
The plot changed from them searching for the Lightning Bolt to searching for pearls??? Although the pearls exist in the books, they’re just given to Percy for free.
The scene where Annabeth and Percy get tricked by Ares into going on The Ride O’ Love and are bombarded by mechanical spiders, thus revealing Annabeth’s fear of spiders.
The entrance to the Underworld is meant to be in a recording studio.
Persephone is in the Underworld, despite it being summer when she should be with her mum.
Annabeth and Percy had wayyyy too much romantic energy between them. Annabeth doesn’t even like him that much at first because he’s a son of Poseidon and their parents have that whole rivalry and therefore so do their kids. She doesn’t even admit that she’s his friend until late in the book.
The actors themselves. They were much too old to be playing these characters and didn’t resemble the characters that were described in the books. I wouldn’t have minded the inaccurate appearances if they had been 12-year-olds who were perfect for the roles. Of course, I can’t blame the actors. In fact, Logan Lerman saved the series from further slander by refusing to work on a third film that the producers had been pushing for.
The worst thing about the films is that they both had the potential to be great, but they refused to work with Riordan and avoid the failure they turned out to be. If you want an accurate portrayal of Percy Jackson and The Lightning Thief, you should watch the musical instead. The musical is a much better representation of the books and is what fans and Riordan deserve.
Riordan is also working on a Percy Jackson series that will be available on Disney+ either late 2023 or early 2024. Riordan has had full control over the upcoming series, and it should be a welcome addition to the Percy Jackson universe.
- By Jay Palmer.
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