Be King, Rewind — “Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief”

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
February 12th, 2010
Regal Hunt Valley
Hunt Valley, MD
4:06pm

While the rest of the world was obsessing over Harry Potter, I was fully into Percy Jackson. I’ve never really been into fantasy worlds, and I think that’s what ultimately kept me from fully getting into Harold Potter. I like movies/tv shows with fantastical elements as long as they’re grounded enough in reality. There’s no real line that tips something one way or the other, and I can’t explain why Harold never worked for me because it does have some grounded elements. Percy Jackson was much more my speed.

The original Percy Jackson series is five books. I believe there are spin-offs and other Percy-adjacent stories, but I only read the original five. Taking place in the early-2000s, the book centers on Percy Jackson (obviously), a thirteen-year-old(?) who finds out that he’s a demigod. His mom is a human who had an affair with Poseidon on one of his earthly jaunts. After he is attacked by a minotaur, Percy’s mom takes him to the safety of Camp Half-Blood, a training camp for demigods because, apparently, Greek Gods simply cannot stop having sex with humans.

The first book, The Lightning Thief, is all about Percy coming into his superpowers and going on a cross-country expedition to recover Zeus’ missing lightning bolt. Blending classic Greek mythology with the contemporary world really works…in the books, but absolutely not the movie.

Unlike Harold Potter fans, who actually got faithful adaptations of their beloved series, we Percy Jackson fans essentially got garbage. You know how sometimes people describe movies as “love letters to the fans?” Well, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief is a hate letter to the fans. It takes every charming part of the book series and actively chooses to go in a direction that is disingenuous to the source material.

Only once in my life have I seen a movie adaptation where the source material is completely eschewed to make something better than the book, and that’s Up in the Air. I am holding out some hope because Disney+ is making another attempt at adapting Percy Jackson. This time, they’re going to actually collaborate with the writer of the books and it will be a series instead of a movie.

Will I be watching be watching this series clearly made for children as an adult who is about to turn thirty? Absolutely.

This is part of the Be Kind, Rewind series. A collection of personal essays as told through my movie ticket stub collection. This essay is preceded by The Lovely Bones and followed by Alice in Wonderland.

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