Last week, I went to see the new film The Lightning Thief, a movie version of the first of Rick Riordan’s “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” books. Knowing that I was going to be doing so, a few days before that I went to my favorite place to buy YA fiction, Kidsbooks (support your local specialty bookstores, folks, and they’ll support you and your community), and bought the first two books of the series in softcover.
It’s a five-book series: The Lightning Thief, Sea of Monsters, The Titan’s Curse, The Battle of the Labyrinth, and The Last Olympian. The books are well-suited to the age for which they’re written–they’re YA books, and fall fairly well into the “school stories” genre, so the books are intended to age with the audience, from eleven to fifteen or so, with a bit of leeway particularly to the younger end of that spectrum. They’re quick reads–I went through the entire series in less than a week, around my other work.
A few minor criticisms of the film
The film is moderately okay. With the really really broad script changes, they’ve dug themselves into some plot holes they’re going to be unable to get out of in subsequent films, and that’s unfortunate. It is inevitable that in turning a book, even a relatively short one, into a film, some elements of the plot will be lost. However, there is losing and then there is trashing, and this book was trashed. To relate this to something everyone knows, think of the continuity problems from text to movie that the Harry Potter series had by the end of the fourth movie. Now imagine ending the first film version of a five-book series with that level of disjunct. Are you horrified yet? I am.
I am also displeased with their decision to age-up the characters. I think that with a series of books that fall into the “school stories” genre, you simply cannot age-up the characters from the beginning. Part of the point is the progression. Rowling fought hard for that progression, and made it easier for later authors to slide it past publishing houses, I suspect. But Riordan, the author of the Percy Jackson books, has made a considerable effort to age his characters in a natural fashion and according to the dictates of his metaplot, and the movies made a hash of that by starting off with the kids being sixteenish. I fell into conversation with an employee at Kidsbooks who had heard, in the way that one does, that the studio insisted on aging the children up to sixteen for legal reasons–since they drive across country in a stolen truck. Those who’ve read the book are at this point making confused-hominid noises and scratching their heads, since in the series, no one drives a car until they are or are nearly the appropriate age anyway. In The Lightning Thief, the kids do not cross the country in a truck, stolen or otherwise; they mostly travel by train or hitch rides (with divine guidance)–yet another example of the unanticipated consequences of changing a few plot details.
A few major criticisms of the film
I really dislike that they chose to have Poseidon claim Percy immediately. A lot of our understanding of hemitheoi in the book comes from watching their interactions with one another, and their angst about their divine parents, as well as their difficulties fitting in with their mortal families. We get none of that in the movie, and I think that the lack of ambiguity actually robs the plot not only of some of its very exciting incidents, but also of much of its meaning.
I am also unhappy with the change in Zeus’ decree. As you know, in the book, he and his two brothers get together and agree that he, Poseidon, and Hades would father no more hemitheoi because it’s too dangerous to have herolings of the “Big Three” running around changing the course of human destiny. In the movie, this is changed to Zeus “passing a law”, Jesus Christ on a crutch, that no god can have any contact with a hemitheos/hemithea child. This makes much of the conflict from the book completely meaningless, and as a result it’s not included in the movie, and the movie is a lot poorer for it.
My major problem with the film as scripted, though, is this: I am displeased with the decision on the part of filmmakers to once again portray the Greek underworld as an infernal, Inferno-esque place of torment, and Hades as an evil god bent on the destruction of all human- and godkind. It is the easy way out, and it’s erroneous, and I don’t like it. Riordan displays a much more accurate understanding of the mechanics of the Greek underworld, and I wish the movie had kept that. As charming as a James Woods/Steve Coogan Evil Lord VaderHades can be, it’s simply erroneous. I’d love to see a movie that doesn’t take that easy, super-camp road to inaccuracy. Also, as charming (…ly hot) as Rosario Dawson is as an adulterous Persephone, particularly paired with Steve Coogan’s aging-Mick-Jagger look, I just…no. A thousand times no. It is horrifyingly inaccurate to the plot of the book (and accepted mythological tradition).
And finally, we end the movie with Luke as the bad guy, we’ve never met Ares at all (or Clarisse), Dionysus isn’t the head of Camp Half-Blood and we never meet him, there’s essentially no interaction with the gods at all, and the trip cross-country is completely bogus rather than being integral to the drastically re-imagined plot. Though the Lotus Hotel and Casino, if entirely inaccurate to the book, is a fun sequence. Also, Kronos never appears and is never alluded to.
And Percy’s eyes are blue, Annabeth is not blonde, and Thalia is never mentioned at all.
Overall grade: C. I have no idea how it holds up if you haven’t read the books, but it worked about as well for me as the Dark is Rising movie worked.
Also, they used a psi for the Y in Percy’s name, and a bunch of the halfbloods at the camp had tattoos on their arms that said either “ΔRΠΣ” or “ΛRΠΣ”, from what I could tell. By the time I’d registered that something was wrong, they weren’t showing the kids’ arms anymore.
