Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief (movie)

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I blogged about reading The Lightning Thief last week, now here’s my take on the big screen version. Checkout the trailer:

This is one of those films that really followed their own take than stay true to the novel that was originally written for young kids. First I would like to say that I liked that movie and think that it is still worth watching. But I will also have to say that I like the book more. Okay, so we say that very often but this time is a bit different. I actually felt disappointed and a little let down. I guess I was expecting a lot from a Chris Columbus film.

Percy Jackson was supposed to be 12 years old when the series started. The actor looks nowhere like he was in sixth grade. He looks more like a highschool freshman or even older, and resembles Zac Efron of HighSchool Musical fame. He is cute though. 🙂 As for Athena’s daughter Annabeth, wasn’t she supposed to be blonde like her mom? I like her, she’s pretty and has personality, but she just didn’t fit the description. And where was her cap of invisibility?

Clarisse, daughter of Ares, was nowhere in the film. Now I wonder, if they ever come out with the sequel, how do they introduce her and her history with Percy? Oh, Ares was nowhere in the film too.  And come to think of it, was Kronos even mentioned? There was no Oracle too, and no quest.

I’m also not very happy about how they presented Camp Half-Blood Hill (Mr. D was missing too). It seemed so medieval. The boyfriend says it was very Spartan-like. The Camp was supposed to look like just any other camp, and the campers wearing shorts and t-shirts. No, in the movie they wore armors and they had old-school cabins. Chiron also knew beforehand who Percy’s dad was, instead of having to wait for it to be revealed. So that meant that Percy didn’t have to crash at the Hermes cabin at all.

There were other points of departure from the novel, and I probably won’t be able to name all of them now.

In terms of special effects, we felt like the movie didn’t do so well specially in the beginning of the film. Eventually though, you kinda started to appreciate it. So I guess it just wasn’t consistent? Medusa’s snakes looked great…

And Luke, he didn’t get much exposure even when he turned out to be the bad guy. They didn’t show him teaching Percy sword fighting. And he didn’t look like he had a scar on his face, it was flawless and didn’t look like he needed an acne scar cream, lol. Well okay I don’t think he had acne problems at all, but the scar he got from his earlier quest was, I think, an important facet of his personality…

Now I realize that all I’ve got to say are criticisms, aren’t we normally like that? If I didn’t read the book prior to seeing the movie, I might have appreciated it more.  All in all, it wasn’t a very memorable movie.

Since posting about this book and watching the movie, I have read books 2 and 3, and have liked them even more. There is more excitement in the next books. I just started with the fourth book today.