My opinion of movies based on books has changed over the years. I believe the first movie I ever saw that was based off a book that I had read beforehand was Harry Potter and the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone. Perhaps that was not the best first example, for it remains the most literal, straightforward adaptation that I have ever seen. There were pretty much no extra scenes added, and hardly anything was omitted from the book. I even went back and skimmed through the book after seeing the movie and found a huge portion of exact lines scattered throughout the pages. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was much the same way, though since the book was longer than the first there were a few more omissions. By now I had begun to establish a sort of status quo for movies that were based on books: the movie adaptations were meant to be as direct and literal as possible. All the filmmaker had to do was make the book his/her screenplay, and s/he was good to go.
But then the director, Chris Columbus, left the Harry Potter movies to go off and do who knows what (write and produce Christmas with the Kranks, apparently), so they got someone else. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban had long been my favorite book of the series, so I was anxious to see it on the big screen, but from the moment the movie started I knew that disappointment was in store. This new director (Alfonso Cuaron) decided to steer away from the literal translation of the books and spice things up a bit. New scenes were added. New characters were added (what the crap was the deal with the Jamaican shrunken head?). Key plot points in the book were treated as arbitrary or left out entirely. Soon after, they announced that Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, a mammoth of a book that was rumored to be made into two movies, was now going to be condensed into a single film. With each of the movies since then, I've been one of those annoying people in the theaters who nitpicks every little detail that's different between the book and movie. There were scenes that I was glad got left out of the movie, and still I complained about them.
I think part of the problem was that I made it a point to re-read each book before its respective movie came out, so the details were fresh on my mind. With each scene that I read, I would think "Ooo, I wonder how they're going to show this in the movie," or "Oh, I bet this'll look cool". When those scenes failed to show, then, I felt cheated, as if the filmmakers had somehow promised these things to me and then denied them at the last moment. It is to them that I must apologize.
I'm not sure what changed my mind. Perhaps I started to read more. Perhaps I saw a perfect example of a literal adaptation that simply did not work as a movie (I'm looking at you, Dune). Perhaps I just grew up. A big moment came when I read The Count of Monte Christo after having seen the movie. In case you haven't experienced both book and movie yourself (though you should), the two are wildly different after a certain point, so different that it almost becomes a new story entirely. And that blew my mind.
Enter Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief (by Rick Riordan, 2005). I had hardly heard of the book series prior to seeing the first poster and trailer for the movie, but immediately I began to hear of fans complaining. I couldn't understand why; the trailer looked pretty cool. I had already decided that I wanted to go see it, and see it I did. Allow me, then, to give a brief review of the movie.
Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief is a PG film about a boy of around 17 years named - you guessed it! - Percy Jackson. From the first time you see him you know that he's not entirely normal, as your introduction to Percy is a shot of him sitting peacefully at the bottom of the pool for a duration of time that surely would have killed me. When he finally surfaces, his goofy friend Grover (hilariously played by Brandon T. Jackson, the "What do you mean 'you people'?" guy from Tropic Thunder) comments that Percy stayed under for over 7 minutes! Anyway, Percy runs into a bit of trouble at his school when one of his teachers turns into a nasty, flying Fury and tries to kill him (don't know about you, but I'm pretty confident that a few of my teachers were Furies), and he has to flee with his buddy Grover and his mom, Sally. They're attacked along the way, and after his mother is taken by a monster, Percy arrives at Camp Half-Blood, where he learns that his father is actually Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea (and technically the earth as well, but it doesn't seem like the movie OR the book go into that little detail). The subtitle "The Lightning Thief" comes from the fact that someone has stolen Zeus' master bolt, and somehow Percy is the primary suspect. It is up to him, Grover, and Annabeth, a daughter of Athena who seems suspiciously similar to Hermione Granger, to find the true culprit behind the theft before Zeus and Poseidon come to blows in what would become World War III.
Let me start off with 3 general comments.
1) The cast is supurb. Really, every character was well-cast, and no actors felt out-of-place (though Uma Thurman's Medusa was a little over-the-top). The kid playing Percy (you'd have seen him in 3:10 to Yuma, if you were smart enough to have seen that movie) was likable and fresh. The girl playing Annabeth looked exactly how you would expect the daughter of Clear-Eyed Athena to look), Sean Bean as Zeus was fun, and Pierce Brosnan as Chiron, Percy's centaur-teacher, was just rugged enough to pull it off.
2) This was your standard "Heroic Journey" plotline. Percy's normal world is threatened; he must go forth to try to fix it, and along the way he discovers more about himself.
And 3) Though it is rated PG, there are some parts that feel very, very mature, mostly in terms of sexual content. If you are a parent and your child wants to see this movie, just know that, while there's nothing specifically implied or shown, there's a lot of underlying tension there, such as Grover's constant desire to seek out and be around beautiful women (he's a satyr, though, so you can hardly blame him).
This brings me to an important point. Remember earlier when I said that fans of the books were angry with the movie? Here's one of the biggest reasons: In the movie, Percy and friends are about 17, but in the books? They're only 11 or 12. That 6-year difference is huge. Much of the movie involves traveling across the country, for instance, so a 17-year-old is going to have a much easier time (since he can drive) than an 11-year-old. This is a 6th grader vs. a junior in high school. Developmentally, there's such a gap there that 11-year-old Percy and 17-year-old Percy may as well be two completely different characters. Why the filmmakers made this change escapes me, though I have heard rumors that they were trying to avoid looking too much like Harry Potter - not a poor sentiment, I suppose, but terrible execution, since Harry is 16/17 in the latest movies. The filmmakers must have thought that it was still 2001 outside.
Not knowing all of that during the movie, I can easily say that it was an enjoyable experience. The three kids (and I use that term loosely, as the guy playing Grover turned 26 shortly after the release of the movie) were extremely likable, the quest was not only interesting but understandable (Percy is trying to clear his name as well as save his mother, who was taken hostage by Hades), and the special effects added some nice flash that one would expect from a movie about a camp for the modern-day Heracles. With a movie like this, it'd have been easy for the filmmakers to simply bank on the hopes that fans of fantasy and of the book would come out in droves to see it regardless of the reviews, but I feel like they honestly did their best to keep the film engaging. You find yourself wanting Percy to succeed and set things straight. You want the true thief to be found out and brought to justice. You experience Percy's and Annabeth's pain at being ignored by their Olympian parents; you wonder, as they do, "couldn't Poseidon/Athena spare even a moment to talk to their child?". Despite the parents being gods, there's a human connection there; how many real-life children who were abandoned by one or both parents have felt the same?
After seeing the movie, I went out and read the book. It's told in 1st-person by Percy, an 11-year-old with a great, if adolescent, sense of humor (the first chapter is called "I Accidentally Vaporize My Pre-algebra Teacher"). The shell of the plot remains more or less the same as the movie, but everything that fills it in is largely, if not entirely, different. Where the movie has three primary "events" during the journey that lead up to the climax, the book has at least half a dozen. I wouldn't call the writing great, but it's really fun and funny, and Percy has a great knowledge of Greek mythology, making this series, if nothing else, a fantastic introduction to Greek myth for youngsters. The myths are explained well and incoporated so seamlessly into the narrative that readers should be able to recall a significant portion of the myths just by thinking of Percy's adventure. And, since the kids are only in 6th grade, there's no sexual tension to be found. It's very kid-friendly, but I as an adult (ha, that's a good one) still thoroughly enjoyed it. Perhaps my favorite thing is seeing how the Olympians have adapted to today's society - you certainly won't find them in togas in the book. In particular, Dionysus (god of wine), as the disgruntled, demoted-from-Olympus head of Camp Half-Blood was brilliant, being forced to drink Diet Coke instead of alcohol and generally bearing ill-will towards this job that he's been forced to do as punishment for his own excess. Very funny, yet still, somehow, very kid-friendly. How the author managed to pull off a kid-friendly alcoholic god is beyond me, but there you go.
I can certainly understand why fans of the book could be disappointed by the movie, as the latter is a Hollywood-ized, loosely-based adaptation that easily missed the point of the book. I know I would have loved to have seen the disgruntled, tiger-print-shirt-wearing Dionysus or the Harley-riding Ares come to life on the big screen, and yet I'm not disappointed. I can still see them, written there on those pages for me to visit whenever I wish. What works in books often simply does not work on the big screen, and vice versa. The Lightning Thief movie would have been a pretty terrible book, but as a movie it was tons of fun. I happily recommend both, but for completely different reasons. Where the book should cater mostly to middle-schoolers and kids (and immature adults such as myself who seem to have a passion for young-adult fiction), the movie can appeal to pretty much anyone who wants a family-friendly version of the upcoming Clash of the Titans remake.
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