My Rants on Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (Movie)
It is my personal opinion, if you happen to disagree with me, I feel completely fine. This post will unfold the difficulty of adapting a book into a movie and some changes from the book to the movie (PJO: The Lightning Thief movie).
Movies, books, and music are the most basic entertainment that exists in our life. Movies and books are often related to one another. Several movies are adapted from books. For example, Pride & Prejudice, Brooklyn, Hunger Games, Percy Jackson, and many more. Adapting a book story into a movie is undeniably challenging. Most movies are often run for 3 hours maximum. Meanwhile, most books have 300 or more pages, it is difficult to include all of the details, characters, and plot from hundreds of pages in a book into a 90 minutes (or more) movie. To build a world from written words into visuals is not an easy job. For a book-adapted movie, directors and scriptwriters are challenged to build a world that could satisfy the audience, especially for those who have read the book version first. Most people who read books often have high expectations while waiting for a visualized version of the book they have read. The result can be good or bad, depending on how well the directors put their mind and soul into their work. Moreover, the choice of actors and actresses, soundtrack, cinematography, and the other technicals in the movie can affect how it is going to turn out. Adapting books into movies is also a marketing strategy. It already created its market for the people who read the book first. Later, the market grows bigger, there will be new people who will be curious and interested in the book, so the writer will get more revenue. If the movie adaptation succeeds, both the author and director will be benefited because it will broaden the market. Things will be different if the movie adaptations resulted in the other way. For example, the Percy Jackson franchise.
Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief is a teen-fiction novel written by Rick Riordan, published in 2005, which was later adapted into a movie using the same title in 2010 directed by Chris Columbus. The movie itself only rated 49% by Rotten Tomatoes, 47% by Metacritic, and 5.9/10 by IMDb. Though, the actors, actresses, author, and movie crew were nominated for some awards.
The movie director, Chris Columbus, is a reputable director. He directs some Harry Potter franchises. It is a shame that The Lightning Thief turns out to be disappointing. The first problem is the choice of cast. The cast for the main characters should be younger, for the reason that the main characters should be 12-year-old kids as told in the book. Logan Lerman, who was cast as Percy Jackson was about 18 years old. Meanwhile, Alexandra Daddario (Annabeth Chase) was about 24 years old. That is twice her character’s actual age in the book. Moreover, Annabeth Chase’s hair colour is blonde, whereas Alexandra Daddario’s hair colour is naturally dark, she did not bleach nor used a blonde wig for the movie. Another feature that Annabeth has is grey-coloured eyes. Daddario’s eyes’ colour is blue, which is incorrect. Provided in the picture below is Annabeth’s appearance.
The next problem is messing up with the plot. In the movie, the major plot is Percy and his friends going places to look for the three pearls that he will use later to return to the mortal world from Underworld (the purpose is to save Percy’s mother). Where in the book, the pearls were delivered by Poseidon, Percy’s god-father, through a messenger. The three of them (Percy, Annabeth, and Grover) are not required to do some quests to look for the pearls. In the movie, the places at which they find the pearls are rather ridiculous. They find it at Medusa’s lair and the Lotus Casino. In contrast to the book, they stumbled into those places by chance unintentionally. Changing the major plot is unnecessary, it makes the movie look like it was not adapted from the book. Or, maybe the director did not read the book at all.
As told in the book, Percy does not know that his mother is still alive, he found out about his mother’s condition when he arrives in the Underworld. In the movie, Percy, his mother, and Annabeth leave Underworld using the pearls and leaving Grover behind because he decided to stay longer. It did not happen like that in the book, Percy’s mother was the one who left in Underworld due to the prophecy that forced him to do so.
Another problem of adapting a book into a movie is they lose the important detail. Namely, the important character is missing in the movie. For The Lightning Thief, 2 substantial characters are missing, to wit Ares and Kronos. For Ares, he should be the one who gives Percy the Zeus’ lightning bolt, not Luke Castellan. Ares is important because he is the secondary antagonist character in the book. There was also a part in the book where Percy fought Ares on a beach and ended with Percy winning the fight. In the meantime, Kronos is supposed to be mentioned in the movie. There was a part in the book where Luke injured Percy and left for Kronos’ army and Kronos appears in Percy’s dream and talks to him to join him in a war against the gods. Those 2 characters were not mentioned even a bit in the movie.
Aside from the missing characters, the movie also seems to lose or ignore the details. For instance, Hades is described as a very tall and muscular god with pale white skin. He often wears black flowing robes and a terrifying helmet. His aura seems to be radiating grace yet dangerous power. In contrast, the movie shows Hades as a cheap knockoff of Johnny Depp. Moreover, he does not look godlike at all without any godly aura. Another detail that the movie missed is the random attacks and traps by the monsters when Percy and his fellows were on their way to Underworld. More importantly, the movie fails to include a scene where Percy vaporized his pre-algebra teacher. Instead, the movie changes the teacher, from a Mathematics teacher into an English teacher which is non-essential.
In conclusion, the movie does not flop entirely. Before acknowledging that it was book-adapted, I was attached to the movie because it was fun and entertaining. Knowing that the movie is adapted from a book series has made me intrigued to start reading the book series. I guess the marketing works on me, as I continue to read the book series to fulfil my curiosity about Percy Jackson’s story and journey in the book series.
