Percy Jackson & the Olympians - The Lightning Thief (2010) - Review/Rant

First Written In May, 2013

 

If I were to describe the film adaptation of Percy Jackson & the Olympians - The Lightning Thief, said word would be “Uninspired.” And that is the biggest thing I hate with any movie, I can admire a movie that goes to great lengths and fails, even if I genuinely dislike it, like the film Daredevil. I can admire a movie that was put together just to get some people money in their pockets (to an extent). I can admire a movie that is clearly a well made, beautifully written, brilliantly acted film that I just plain can’t get into, such as an indie flick known as “Wrist Slitters - A Love Story” a film about a basically a sort of indie romantic comedy taking place in a purgatory for people who committed suicide. But if there’s one thing I genuinely hate in film, it’s a movie that is completely uninspired. Other examples of this are the Green Lantern film, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and the Blade Trinity, interestingly all three of those are comic book films with Ryan Reynolds.

Now some of you are likely asking, “Coty, why’re you such a hater? Just enjoy the thing. It’s only a movie.” That it may be, but here’s the issue, I can’t enjoy the film. I’m an enormous fan of the book series this film is adapted from, and I’ve even seen a recent trailer for it’s sequel which looks to be miles better. I followed this film’s production closely because I was such a fan, in fact this and The Last Airbender were the first film I ever really looked up information for because I was so jazzed about how one of my favorite books was being made into a franchise. And there were multiple red flags i saw in both productions. Those red flags in this production were 1. Why were the aging up the characters were 12 years at the end of the first book? 2. Why was the character Grover, a light skinned ginger kid in the book, being portrayed by a black man? 3. Why wasn’t the character of Annebeth being played by a blond girl? I decided to dismiss these things, as in my opinion the look of a character is secondary to if the character is portrayed well.

And they weren’t. The character of Annebeth’s first few words to the main character of Percy in the book was “You drool in your sleep.” In the film, her parting words to Percy in their first full length conversation was “I definitely have strong feelings for you, I just don’t know yet if they’re positive or negative.” A complete 180 of the character. In the book, Grover is a shy timid character who is said to be a bit of a late bloomer, and has an enormous inferiority complex. In the film he’s just your generic black sidekick. If you really look at this film’s characters, it takes a unique trifecta of characters from the book, and turns them into a bland stereotypical action movie trio. The hero with some sort of larger than life destiny, the comedic relief who’s the hero’s best friend, and the hot chick/tough girl who primarily uses long ranged weapons and is the hero’s inevitable love interest.

I have no issues, by the way, with a film moving away from a book’s source material, there are differences between movies and books as storytelling mediums so you need to play with the material a little bit to create a good movie, instead of a good adaptation. That’s fine. And I love a good old fashioned action movie, a couple personal favorites of mine would be the recent film Olympus has Fallen and the original Die Hard film. But if I go to a film to see to an adaptation of my favorite characters to the big screen and one of my favorite stories put to film, I’d like for it to be done well. Which is especially disappointing since the director of this film, Chris Columbus, also did the first two Harry Potter films and the first two Home Alone films, however after doing some more research I think those films were aided less by Columbus’ direction and more by those film’s producers, the performers there and the material they were working with. A lovely example of why this director fails to create compelling films when left to his own devices would be the I Love You Beth Cooper, released the year before this film.

Now the little amount of praise I can give this film is in it’s casting, this film put Logan Lerman on the map, while he doesn’t show much of the same level of talent we see in the more recent, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, I do enjoy his performance as Percy here. Having read the book and knowing how this character acts, behaves, and thinks, I can definitely by him having some of the attitude he does in this film given that he has to put up with his worthless step father for even longer here than in the book. While I don’t get a lot from Pierce Brosnan in this film, I really think he could’ve been a great pick for Chiron in this film. Sean Bean and Kevin McKidd’s casting as Zeus and Poseidon were one of the briefest moments of inspiration in this film. I love them as these two. Sean Bean pulls every off drop of Zeus’ pure arrogance and pompous attitude, when he accuses his brother of having his son steal his source of power, I really believe that Zeus thinks Poseidon would sink that low, no pun intended. Kevin does a wonderful job with making Poseidon feel sympathetic, even though he really isn’t, although it does bug me like the film treats Percy’s mother as being extra special to him. The Greeks Gods were wild with lust people, they took everyone to bed, and didn’t think much of it the next day. For having only four months to put together these aren’t bad special effects, the CGI is pretty decent for the most part.

But now on to the stuff I REALLY hate. In the both the book and film, it is revealed by the end that the character of Luke Castellan is a traitor who wishes to end the reign of the gods of olympus. The difference however is that Jake Abel’s acting and this movie’s script make it PAINFULLY obvious that he’s the villain. In the end of the book version this film is based on, Luke’s betrayal is very unexpected. And the story itself helps with this betrayal being unexpected, Percy’s won, Zeus’ master lightning bolt (and Hades’ helm of darkness) are returned, the potential civil war is called off, everyone’s happy. But when Percy returns to camp, we find Luke to have a bit of a different vibe than the last we saw him, he offers Percy a coca cola as they go off into the woods for a conversation. And then at the end of the initial conversation, Luke sicks a poisonous scorpion on Percy, giving him a grand speech about his alliance with the titan Kronos and how his greatest wish is tear Olympus itself down stone by stone. At the beginning of the book, Luke comes off as an extremely positive guy, he offers Percy advice multiple times and offers him his only gift from his father. He’s an older brother figure to our main trio, his treachery is shocking to say the least. Here, I’m not even sure if this guy knows Annebeth or Grover that well, and early on in the film he refers to his father as, and pardon my language here, “a jackass.” He even requests that while Percy’s on his quest, that should he run into Hermes, his Olympian parent, to kick his butt for him. Can you be more obvious?

Oh, and if during the last part you noticed details that weren’t in the movie, that’s another problem. The book is ripe for Hollywood harvesting, it has great climactic swordfights between heroes and monsters, gods, titans and even other heroes. It has a wonderful sense of humor, Percy and the rest of our heroes are snarky and sarcastic in a just plain wonderful way. The blending of modern culture and ancient myth is far less hamfisted and much more natural. Oh, and the modernization here also seeks to really date the film, whereas in the book it actually gives it a sort of timeless feel. There’s direct calls to any current technology or products, except for ones which have already proven the test of time. Seriously, watch the movie and tell me that that Lady Gaga song at the casino doesn’t date the film to the year 2010.

And for the final part, that would’ve been this movie’s saving grace, but wound up being one of the worst parts of it, the action. The fight choreography in the capture the flag scene isn’t that bad at first, but when Percy touches the water to heal after being cut up by Annebeth, she doesn’t bother to fight him more. He just walks triumphantly and takes the flag without a single word. A longer and better fight between these two could have been great the adrenal glands and the brain, entertaining you with a great action sequence while giving you subtext about who these characters are, you just get “stab slash cut, haha, you're dead, I win, yay.” and then we get Percy rising without a single cut. Why? This is the guy who staged all those hilariously violent and painful slapstick sequences in home alone, you couldn’t translate that into an entertaining fight scene? And then of course there’s that final fight between Luke and Percy with Luke trying to zap Percy with the master bolt and Percy trying to splash Luke with a ton of water. They’re both flying thanks to the magic of Converse with shoes, but neither one really ever connects with the other. You know what this scene lacks? Two things: choreography and tension. In the film X2: X-Men United, one the highest point of the film in terms of action and characterization is where the character Wolverine jumps through the X-Mansion slicing, dicing, slashing, cutting, stabbing and shanking these highly trained mercenaries. You know what makes that action sequence work.

1. It’s well choreographed, most the of sequences with Wolverine’s claws are done with practical effects, none of it’s done in shaky cam, Wolverine takes bullets, and while it’s clear the people with guns are out of their league you still buy that it takes Hugh Jackman’s character a little while to take out these guys.
2. Tension, you may not be worried about Wolverine himself, but you are very worried that he won’t be able to save the sleeping kids in the mansion. You’re cheering him on all throughout this fight, but there’s a nagging feeling that he might not do it.

I bring this up because it’s one of my favorite action sequences from a movie, the fight scene at the climax of Percy Jackson has no tension and no qualities that grip you. This sequence is boring, you can tell there’s money being thrown at the screen, but you don’t care. Here’s a thought, these guy’s have swords, have a duel! Or better yet, replace this scene with the fight with Ares, the God of War, from the book! It’s not only more gripping, just plain a show of good of a fighter Percy is, that he could make the God of War bleed! Instead, nope, the fight ends with Percy conjuring a trident from the water, commenting “I think I am The Son of Poseidon,” and chucks it Luke piercing him through the chest and sending him flying, in a manner much less grotesque than that description can create in your head.

Overall, this movie was a big disappointment. And to this day, while most critics would just look at and say “meh.” I look at and say “I hate you!” I’m going to Percy Jackson & The Olympians - The Lightning Thief, a 1.3 out of 5.