As you know, the Kid read the first Percy Jackson book last week as a school assignment, so we could see the movie as a family this weekend. We went to the movies last night to see it (Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief). Boy howdy... what a disappointment.
Having read the book then seeing the trailers for it, once we saw that the "this is a pen" clip was different from the book, we should have known that the movie would deviate from the book. It did, but we just didn't realize how much.
Look at it this way: the first Harry Potter book by J.K. Rowling was quite long but the movie captured almost all of it, including secondary and tertiary characters. Events happened as written. Plot points incorporated. Themes and symbols continued throughout. They didn't let the length and scope of the book make the movie suffer.
This Percy book was a great deal shorter, and didn't have the subtleties and subplots that the Harry Potter series did. But how curious ... even tho the book was short, most of the characters from the book made no appearance or even mention in the movie. Where was grumpy Mr. D? Echidna and chihuahua. The furies on the bus. Clarisse the bully and the toilet bowl incident. Cerebus the 3-headed dog. Not even the god Ares on his motorcycle made an appearance! Or the Mist! The path the 3 adventurers took to Los Angeles was pretty much nothing like the book... even using different cities and completely cutting out the St. Louis arch and the chihuahua scenes.
Guess the producer and director thought the book wasn't "hollywood" enough and thought THEY could do a better job bringing in the dough. Even tho the book was on the bestseller's list for more than 130 weeks.
Yes, there were some spectacular special effects, like Percy making water converge and practically drown an antagonist, but I was so upset about the movie deviating from the book, that I barely noticed them.
A big THUMBS DOWN for this movie. Don't waste your money. If you really want to see it, don't read the book first. Or wait for the movie to come out on regular free TV in a couple of years.
1 comment:
I couldn't agree with you more. The Harry Potter series was so much more elaborate than the Percy Jackson series. There was really NO REASON for Chris Columbus to take that much freedom with the book. I thought the movie was CRAP! I can't believe Rick Riordan let them do that to his vision. SHAME SHAME SHAME
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