Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief

Viewer Rating:JasonF has rated Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief rating: 3 Star

As an avid reader and movie-goer, I always jump at the chance to see the story jump off the pages and onto the bigscreen. This being said, the accuracy of the movies I've seen has been iffy at best (i.e Harry Potter franchise). But I can honestly say, The Lightning Thief puts Harry Potter's book accuracy to shame. They SKEWERED the story. Not only did they make a relatively bad casting call (in my personal opinion), but they murdered the entire other set of stories from here on in with a single desisive blow. Heres a kinda short list of complaints I had.


GRIEVANCES:

*Characters were to old, (high school aged) as compared to the story, where they are only 12

*Annabeth Chase (Alexandra Daddario), Pretty as Alexandra Daddario is, as just as a little node of accuracy, should have been blonde( doesn't ruin the movie, it's just nice to be accurate)

Grover Underwood, where to begin... Maybe at the part where he is too charismatic? Grover in the stories is by no stretch of the imagination a ladies man, and in the movie he surrounds himself with women ,along with various other "things" that I will not go into at this time.

Story line was skewered thoroughly, leaving a bloody mess on the floor. The beginning I don't have much to complain about,( though it was a bit accelerated) but as to the middle of the movie, they added and changed to much for my liking. The coup de grace( for now) is the antagonist of the film (It makes me wonder if they even read the book and not a synopsis) Hades. In the book, they try DESPERATELY to prove it wasn't HADES and it was actuallt Kronos, father of the Greek Gods who used Luke to obtain the Bolt. Since they used Hades as the antagonist, how would they continue the story? The other books are all based around Kronos as the antagonist. A might pickle indeed.

Overall, I liked the movie, it had some cute lines and was interesting to watch, and the action was nicly choreographed. It was very modern too, with the music and mannerisms of the people and my personal favorite, Call of Duty:Modern Warfare 2 in the background playing(best game ever, off topic ,moving on) I think though, that I would have liked this movie more if I hand't read the book. All-in-all, see it with your kids, without your kids or whatever, you probably won't regret it.

May the Gods of Film watch over you

JF

Review published on the 13 February 2010 13:41