Let's get this out of the way first: were the Percy Jackson movies perfect? Of course, not! Were they bad? Not… exactly. They're not awful.
Hear me out. The first movie, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, came out in 2010. Studios were salivating over recreating the success of the Harry Potter movies. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 grossed $970 million worldwide. It was the third-highest-grossing movie that year.
The studios were looking for the next big thing, the next Harry Potter. And they found Percy Jackson. They thought they could turn into the next Harry Potter. But here's the biggest problem why they couldn't: money.
Tom, Rothman, the studio head that made the Percy Jackson movies was “notorious for making movies on the cheap.” Both the Harry Potter and Percy Jackson books had a built-in audience.
However, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was published in 1998 and The Lightning Thief in 2005. In 2010, the Harry Potter movies had had 12 years to grow an already existing massive fan base and Deathly Hallows Part 1 was its penultimate movie. Compare it to The Lightning Thief which only had five years.
If I sound defensive, it's because I am… slightly. I'm not blind to the movies' faults, of which there are many. Even author Rick Riordan described the them as his “life's work going through a meat grinder.”
I'm not about to argue against the author because I love the books, and I definitely understand why he said that. The movies strayed way too far from the source material. I'm all for artistic license and the need to trim down a story to fit the 1.5 hours of the average human attention span when it comes to movies.
I also acknowledge the fact that the movies did not do the books justice at all. I did say in the beginning that I know, objectively speaking, that neither one was perfect. It got a lot of things wrong from the book.
However, let me propose something that might be quite controversial: let's look at the just the movies. We can't avoid comparing it to the book series because they were, after all, adaptations. But let's try to stay on point and just focus on the movies and what it got right.
Casting
C'mon, you love Logan Lerman as Percy. Sure, in the movies he was older. He was supposed to be a kid in the book, but in the movies he's a teenager, a convincing 18-year-old. But you have to admit that he kicked ass as Percy.
And Alexandra Daddario as Annabeth, daughter of the goddess Athena, to me spot on. In Homer's The Odyssey, Athena is described as “the gray-eyed goddess.” Daddario's eyes are light blue gray. Visually speaking, she really looked like she could be the goddess' daughter.
Kevin McKidd as Poseidon. This is my bias talking, but McKidd had one of the best introductions as Dr. Owen Hunt on Grey's Anatomy. I know it has nothing to do with his playing Poseidon here, but if you know who the actor was and you knew he was Scottish, you'd think it would make sense for a Greek god to speak with a Scots brogue. He doesn't, but hey, we can't have everything.
Sean Bean as Zeus, in one of the few roles where he doesn't die. Fun fact: Out of Sean Bean's 122 credited roles, he has at least 10 where he doesn't die. This is one of them.
Pierce Brosnan as Mr. Brunner/Chiron. James Bond is a centaur. Let that sink in.
Uma Thurman as Medusa. She looked so good in all that black leather. That's it. That's the tweet, as the kids say nowadays.
Scenes
Maybe this is my bias talking again, but I thought Poseidon shrinking into hoodie-wearing human in that kind of messy water CGI was cool. I don't mean the CGI was cool; the fact that Poseidon would wear a hoodie looking a bit like an off-duty fisherman.
Which is in character, right? And when he meets up with Zeus on top of the Empire State building, we see the king of the gods dressed like he just got off work as a Goldman Sachs broker. Again, very in character.
How the pen is as mighty as the sword… because here the pen is a sword. In that scene in the museum where Mr. Brunner gave Percy a pen to defend himself from one the Furies, Percy took one look at it and looked like he wanted to just chuck it right at the centaur (but he didn't know that yet).
Percy's lakeside house, where he's the only occupant. The book and the movie said that the Big Three (Zeus, Poseidon and Hades) were forbidden from having any more children because it upset the balance of power. That meant Percy got to live solo in a Pinterest worthy crib.
How Percy discovers how to heal himself using the water in the river. The CGI looks funky now, but the first time I saw it 13 years ago, I wanted to be able to heal myself that way, too. I live in an archipelago, grew up on an island. If I were a child of Poseidon, imagine how convenient it would have been for me to just scoop up a handful of water and heal my injuries.
Percy uses the back of the back of his iPod's – do you still remember those? – reflection during his confrontation with Medusa. Clever, but it didn't distract me away from how Medusa is portrayed — no shade to Uma. I still love her.
TRIGGER WARNING:
There's that disturbing moment when Medusa tells Percy, “I used to date your daddy.” If you've ever read Greek mythology, you know that the two never dated. Date implies consent from both parties.
However, the Percy Jackson books are still meant for children. I understand that it's a sensitive topic. I'm not here to pontificate, but I would remiss not to point that part as, at the very least, disturbing.
Back to regular programming.
When Percy heals Annabeth using his powers. It's an echo of how he healed himself earlier in the film. For some reason, I thought it only worked when it's a natural body of water. But hey, it works in a pool, too. Because what matters is the water, not the vessel it comes in. There's a lesson in there somehow.
It's a nice touch that Percy, Grover and Annabeth escape from the Lotus Casino in a Maserati, whose logo is a trident.
But when all is said and done…
I still think the movies — especially the first — one get a bad rap because it changed A LOT of the details from the books.
However, if like I said earlier, you just focus on just the movies, they really aren't all that bad. When you watch the movies again, like I did, try to leave the Percy, Annabeth and Grover that you met in the books and be introduced the movie versions. You'll find they're actually okay.
However, I'm excited to see what seems to be age-accurate portrayals of the characters on Disney+'s series.
Dec. 20 can't come fast enough.
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